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"SHADOWS:" 



A FAMILIAR PRESENTATION 



THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES 



SPIRITUAL MATTERS, 

WITH 
ILLUSTRATIVE NARRATIONS. 



frl 



l/ BT 

JOHN WETHERBEE. 



" Concerning those spiritual beings which 

' Walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.' 

Are there, indeed, such beings ? Is this space between us and the 
Deity filled up by innumerable orders of spiritual beings ?" — W. Irving. 



TAN 5/ 



BOSTOX: 

COLBY & RICH, PUBLISHERS, 

Corner Boswortk and Province Sts. 

1885. 



* 



y 



Copyrighted by John Wetherbee, 1885. 



DEDICATION. 



Jo J^ouise, 

The wife of my youth, who is also my wife and inspirer now in my matu- 
rity. How much during the past two or three decades have we together 
thought over these once strange, but now, by long association, familiar 
realities? When our first-born passed into the world of silence, where she 
is now, — the unseen but not an unperceived member of our otherwise 
unbroken family, — how sweet to have found the "Gates Ajar." so that 
we both realized that, though invisible, she was not absent, — when with 
fear, but hopefully, we wrote, inspired by our grief : — 

Oh, philosophy ! destroy not the charm 
That cheers thus our hours of sadness; 

Dissolve not the spell, if 't is but a dream, 
That changes our sorrow to gladness. 

These little soft raps we now and then hear 

I feel are the voice of my daughter; 
They seem to be saying : " Dear mother, I 'm here," 

Though they sound like the dropping of water. 

Our two little boys when they hear these raps, 
Too young, like us, to have missed her, 

Look up with a smile, and say : " Do you hear 
The voice of our dear little sister? " 

Neither philosophy nor experience has disturbed the current of our 
happy belief; and while our loved little one has grown into womanhood 
in the land of souls, the inspiring fact has strengthened in us with our 
years. I have felt like saying this much, and to say also that this book is 
due to you, for I doubt if I would have put my thoughts into this form but 
for your persuasion from appreciation of my written words and of me; so 
to you, my beloved, the well-preserved mother of our Hattie, at an age 
when sentiment is apt to have gone into eclipse, — happily not in our case, 
—I dedicate these M Shadows " to you, feeling assured that in the alembic 
of your own mind and heart they will show up both as summer and sun- 
shine, J. W. 



PREFACE. 



T have been rather arbitrary in calling these pages 
-*- " Shadows," for there is nothing particularly shadowy 
in them, except that the subject in many minds is suggestive 
of the shadowy. The following colloquy, which lately 
occurred, as given below, will explain its title as well as in 
any other way, if an explanation is of any consequence : — 

Mr. Shadows was seated, pen in hand, at his writing table, 
when his friend, Mr. Boulder Scratches, entered the room, 
and, seeing the situation, said: "Well, Shadows, what are 
you at now ?" "I have a book inside of me," said he, or the 
matter of one, and I have made up my mind to make it 
manifest in the form." "On what subject?" said Scratches; 
or, I need not ask that, but what is the special point in 
Spiritualism to be treated, or what is the name or title of the 
book to be ? " "I do not know myself yet," said Shadows ; 
there is time enough for a name before it will be ready for 
the printer." Scratches said : " When I write anything, I 
start with a title." " I never do," said Shadows ; but now 
you have spoken of it, and are not a novice in book-making, 
I think a name would help me some. I wish I had one cut 
and dried, and adapted to my thought." "Why do n't you 
name it after yourself," said he ; your name and Spiritual- 



6 PREFACE. 

ism seem to be suggestive of each other. i Come like shadows, 
so depart? " h§ said, quoting from Macbeth, — the low or 
deep voice in which he spoke it struck him favorably, and 
he said : " I think I will ; my name or your name, ' Shadows, 
or ' Scratches,' — I do n't know but I like ' Scratches ' the 
better, — but as you may wish some day to use ' Scratches,' 
I guess I will christen mine ' Shadows.' " 

The endeavor has been in these chapters, or, as now 
called, Shadows, first, that each one should be a finished one 
of itself, using the word finish in rather a liberal sense, — 
that is, that each chapter should be a readable one, without 
any special connection with the other, and aiming at no 
logical or consecutive order, so that in reading them one can 
skip about without any confusion. 

The endeavor has also been, in the matter presented, to 
make the chapters in their wholeness give the reason, with- 
out particularly saying so, why I am a Spiritualist, not that 
it is of any consequence to the public what I am, or in what 
I believe, but being rather a man of the world and of busi- 
ness, one who has touched current life actively, if not broadly, 
and who is not constitutionally a dreamer or a sentimentalist. 
In my retired or private social circle I am not thought to be 
one whose tendencies would be either religious or spiritual, 
but being, I trust, both, the chapters, or shadows, that com- 
pose this book, will explain the reason why, if it be a mat- 
ter of interest to anyone. 

The endeavor has also been to make this book a familiar 
presentation of the subject of modern Spiritualism to those 
whom it may concern, both among its exponents and among 



PEEFACE. T 

that wider world who feel interested in the subject, and wish 

it were true, and who. like myself, want the ;; bottom facts." 

In what I have said I have aimed at simplicity, and I 

know I have been truthful. If I have used the personal 

pronoun too much for good taste,, no one is more aware of it 

than I am. but it could not very well be avoided with what 

I had in contemplation. My apology then is my desire, by 

this familiar, confidential way of expressing myself, to be 

persuasive, or, at least, to command the attention of the 

thoughtful reader. 

J. W. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Giving in a familiar way the Genesis and the Exodus of these 
chapters, which the author has somewhat arbitrarily called 
" Shadows" 13 

CHAPTER II. 

ITS RAISON D'ETRE. 

A substitute for faith. — The Bible a sealed book without it. 

— With it, a rational one 27 

CHAPTER III. 

THE GATES AJAR. 

Explaining why the writer is a Spiritualist, and obliged to 
be one 35 

CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITS. 

Its permanent entry into the writer's mental life. — Details 
of the interview 47 

CHAPTER V. 

LIFE'S AFTERNOON. 

The " Dawning Light" seems to be a boon or consolation 
to advancing years. — An extension-claim . . . .57 

CHAPTER VI. 

INDEPENDENT SLATE- WRITING. 

An elaborate description of an experience under the most 
rigid conditions 69 

CHAPTER VII. 

PHENOMENA WITH COLCHESTER. 

Thoughts on sensuous phenomena, and illustrations from 
experience 83 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PHANTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 

Being an article illustrative of the subject in general . . 95 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER IX. 

EPES SARGENT. 

Some description of him, and experiences he and the writer 
have had together. — Joseph Cook 104 

CHAPTER X. 

ON LEANNESS OF THOUGHT. 

The deficiency is made up by the sensuous proof of a spirit- 
ual source 117 

CHAPTER XI. 

PRO-SPIRITUALISM. 

An article written for, and published in, The Radical • . 125 
CHAPTER XII. 

HOME MANIFESTATIONS. 

Giving a brief account of phenomena which are both " bot- 
tom facts " and " startling facts" • 138 

CHAPTER XIII. 

SEERSHIP OR CLAIRVOYANCE. 

Giving an account of phenomena with an intelligent and 
sometimes a prophetic basis 147 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SUBJECTIVE APPARITIONS. 

A visit of consolation where the consoler got consoled • 154 
CHAPTER XV. 

EMELLNE'S APPARITION. 

Other " white ladies " besides the one of Avenel, related by 
Sir Walter Scott 160 

CHAPTER XVI. 

IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 

The Sage of Galveston returns according to promise . . 169 
CHAPTER XVII. 

UNKNOWN QUANTITIES. 

Prime factors. — Philosophical musings on human happi- 
ness .... 182 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

ALLEN DOLE. 

A reliable family tradition that amounts almost to a personal 
experience 189 



10 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

INDIAN-SPIRIT INFLUENCES. 

What the subject suggests, and a supplement of poetry. — 
Astronomical 197 

CHAPTER XX. 

A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 

An entertaining sketch that will fill up some deficiencies hi 
the course of these " Shadows" 207 

CHAPTER XXI. 

MATTER AND SPIRIT. 

Of intercourse with spirits. — Some couditions worth know- 
ing. — Illustrations. — Sealed letters .... 219 

CHAPTER XXII. 

A PENUMBRAL SKETCH. 

An afternoon with the spirits. — A departed friend returns 
from over the river, and owns up 229 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

M ATERIALIZ ATION. 

Affirmations. — Critical comments. — Illustrative Experi- 
ences . 238 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

CUI BONO ? 

What is the good of it all, even admitting it to be true ? — 
The answer self-evident 254 

CHAPTER XXV. 

PREVISION. 

Containing some thoughts on prophecy, critical and illus- 
trative . . . 259 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

Conclusions on several interesting and important points . 267 
CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 

Thoughts that the locality suggests to a Spiritualist . . 278 
Theodore Parker c .288 



11 A few years since I had a long conversation with a bishop, 
who is held in deservedly high reputation by the orthodox body 
of Christians to which he belongs. He introduced the subject 
of modern Spiritualism, and I asked him how he regarded its 
phenomena. He answered frankly and satisfactorily. He said 
that evidences of infidelity were multiplying among us ; he lately 
heard a professor of Harvard College say that three-fourths of 
the scientific men of our day are unbelievers, and skepticism is 
beginning to intrude among the clergy. He told me that he 
himself, a few weeks before, had visited the death-bed of an 
aged brother in the ministry, a man who had devoted a long life 
with rare faithfulness to the duties of his profession. As they 
spoke of the evidences of Christianity, a shade of sadness passed 
over the dying man's face. 'Ah, bishop,' said he, 'the proof, 
the proof ! If we only had it ! ■ "— M. D. Owen, in "Debatable Land'* 



U 



I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Giving in a familiar way the Grenesis and the Exodus 
of these chapters, which the author has somewhat 
arbitrarily called "Shadows " 

The writer trusts that what he may say in the way 
of introduction will be as much a part of the main 
argument of the book as if he had written it under 
some more definite heading. His intention or object 
can be better set forth in this way than in the sev- 
eral chapters that follow, saving superfluity, enabling 
him to better present the subject in its many points 
with simplicity and brevity. 

If one writes, or rather publishes, a book, he 
should have something to say, and a motive for say- 
ing it. The writer thinks he has something to say 
on what he considers the most important subject for 
human consideration; and most thoughtful people 
will agree with him on that point, very likely, how- 
ever, qualifying this superlative expression with an 
"if" saying, if there were anything definitely known 
about it. If the writer, by his long experience and 
investigation under great advantages, did not con- 
sider the qualifying if a superfluity, and that he 

13 



14 INTRODUCTORY. 

knew with about as much certainty the truth of this 
somewhat transcendental subject as he did of things 
in general that are considered by thoughtful, schol- 
arly people as true and worthy of attention, he would 
show his wisdom by remaining silent. Whether he 
has anything to say, therefore, the production must 
speak for itself. As for the motive he has for writ- 
ing the book, he has many ; the principal one is, he 
has been persuaded that what he has to say is really 
wanted, and deserves a hearing. In this connection, 
by way of explanation, the following circumstance 
will not be out of place : — 

He will now more familiarly address the reader ; 
thinks he can come closer, and express himself bet- 
ter in a change from the third to the first person, 
even at the expense of apparent egotism, for which 
he asks pardon. 

A very venerable minister, residing in the State of 
New York, attracted by the fascinating subject of a 
future life, began a correspondence with me. He 
was much nearer his ninetieth than to his eightieth 
year ; had had a long, successful, and useful career ; 
had been for many years the settled minister over a 
church of the liberal, or Unitarian, order. He had, 
of course, in that capacity, performed the marriage 
and the funeral services of his people and neighbor- 
hood during all that time. He had consoled the 
mourners in their bereavement when death had 
drafted from their midst the old or the young faces 
of the family circles in his parish or town. I do not 
know at what period these ministerial consolations 



ESTTPwODUCTORY. 15 

had become merely a form, his faith in a future life 
having gone into eclipse, and agnostic ideas had 
taken possession of his mind ; but when he began his 
correspondence with me he had doubts of the future 
or continued existence of man after the death of the 
body, and on that account he had retired from his 
pulpit into a private, scholarly, thoughtful life. 

Somebody had sent him an article that I had writ- 
ten, in which I had narrated an experience which, 
he said, "if true to the letter, would settle the ques- 
tion affirmatively in his mind," and he began the cor- 
respondence of which I have spoken, and which grew 
interesting to both of us. I found him so penetrat- 
ing, acute, and mentally vigorous that I never 
dreamed of his being so old a man, as later I learned 
he was. 

Now I will take the liberty of digressing just for 
a minute, following my impression, and, doing so, 
w r ill be in keeping with my statement that, though 
this is an u Introduction," it is also something more 
than one. Thinking of this thoughtful old man 
leads me to say, in this episodical way, that mental 
activity in the line of hopeful thought is a great 
lengthener of human life, — occupation of one's mind 
on high matters, whether on the scientific plane or 
in the religious or the spiritual direction, so long as 
the pabulum is mentally nutritious, that is truthful, 
or seemingly so. I hope the reader will understand 
me when I say rational thought, for a man may be 
very earnest, very fluent, and very full of moral and 
religious ideas, based on what, in his own mind, he 



16 INTRODUCTORY. 

does not consider reasonable or true, no matter how 
sure he pretends to be of his premises, having scrip- 
tural endorsement and the whole army of Bible be- 
lievers to sustain him, — that kind of truth which 
may in a man's heart seem untrue, — I do not offer as 
nutritious food or life-prolonging. A sure and happy 
future life, after the mortal one has ended, in one's 
mind, based on sensuous proof, or even on intuition, 
if it amounts to proof, is a lengthener of life in this 
world, and, all other things being equal both in a 
man's Genesis and his Exodus, it adds youthfulness 
also to his longevity. Let no one now quote the 
many exceptional instances to this bold statement, 
and mention, perhaps, Theodore Parker, who was 
really eighty when he was only fifty, and who on thu 
theory was entitled to duration ; nor many a poor, 
thoughtless, hard-working, and very ignorant person 
who outstays his threescore-and-ten a decade or two, 
for these are the exceptions. Statistics show that 
the studious and scholarly class outlast the laboring 
class in longevity. With the sensuous, proof that a 
man not only has a future beyond the dark valley, 
but one that is an extension of this life into the 
domain of the spiritual, as it becomes a matter of 
general acceptance, will add to human longevity. 

Many things have already extended the average 
length of human life from what it was a hundred 
years ago, — sanitary attention, wisdom in living, 
better ventilation, and the principle of the survival 
of the fittest, carrying its momentum with it, have 
effected this improvement, which is a matter of fact, 



IKTEODUCTOTtY. 17 

now add to these important factors not only the hope 
but the demonstration of the survival of the man 
beyond the death of the body, then, when its belief 
is as general as is the belief in the Copernican sys- 
tem, or as it is to those who constitute the body 
politic of Spiritualism, it will add still more to the 
years of human duration, and to its usefulness also, 
for the face behind the mask is not supposed to be a 
wrinkled one. 

Returning now from this episode to our venerable 
^-minister, with whom, as has been stated, I have 
had much correspondence, — whose earnest, vigorous 
words have impressed me both with his command of 
language, his logic, and his sincerity. I liked very 
much his interrogatories, his incisive thrusts into my 
statements, his desire for the "bottom facts." I think 
he did me good, whether I relieved hiru from his 
doubts or not. I really made no effort to convert 
him. I never do to anyone; am making none now 
in writing this book. To make converts, or the con- 
version of anyone, is to me a matter of indifference. 
I sometimes think the doctrine of election shows 
itself in this matter, as it does in many others, as a 
constitutional quality, so that the old orthodox point 
may after all have had some natural basis of truth. 
I simply gave this correspondent what, from my 
point of view, appeared to be the truth regarding 
modern Spiritualism, illustrating it from my experi- 
ence. 

I want it to be understood by all that I am a 
Spiritualist from experience. I do not think I could 



18 INTRODUCTORY. 

believe as I do on anyone's testimony. People are 
differently constituted; some believe more readily 
than others; some people are helped by their intui- 
tions. Theodore Parker once said to me, speaking 
of "spiritual manifestations," that he needed no 
proofs of another life ; if he had any doubts, it was of 
this life,- — Whether this world was a reality, — none 
at all of the other. Blessed are these men who are 
such born believers. They are the ones who in all 
ages have kept the sacred fire of hope alive and burn- 
ing. The mass of mankind, particularly in this 
materialistic age, lack this inspiring intuition, and so 
need sensuous proof, and, without it, are without 
faith. 

Our venerable minister says, in one of his letters, 
that if he had my experience, and knew that it was 
so, he would be a believer, and be happy. Some- 
times he is afraid, he says, I am beguiled by others, 
or, perhaps, by my own desires. It is possible I am ; 
I am only human, but I hardly think so ; if I in any 
degree thought so, I would at once lay down my pen. 
I am as sure of my facts, in this line of thought, as I 
am of them in any other department of knowledge. 

As I propose in the following chapters to give 
some of my experiences as well as some of my infer- 
ences and deductions, I am taking some liberty in 
this introductory chapter to impress upon the reader, 
as I did upon this minister, that I am dealing with 
positive facts, and not suppositions. I am sure there 
is a power, impulse, or force in nature not recognized 
as yet by science, or as something outside of the rec- 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

ognized domain of science ; the best exoteric defini- 
tion of it is Psychic Force. This power, or force, is 
certainly intelligent, even if ultra human. It claims 
to be a voice from " over the river " from departed 
spirits ; it claims to be from the loved and lost, from 
those whose bodies are moldering in the grave, 
assuring us mortals that they still live. This intelli- 
gent "psychic force " has never claimed to be any- 
thing else but a departed human being, in a single 
instance, from the first manifestation in 1848 to the 
present time. It probably never will. It looks to 
me as if it was going, as the saying is, " to laugh 
last," or best. 

With the evidence I have, some of which I pro- 
pose to present, I am obliged to take this "Psychic 
Force's " word, and believe in dealing with it I am 
dealing, not with the dead, but with those whose 
mortal forms only are tenants of the world's sepul- 
chers, but who are still living entities; I am obliged 
to respect that claim, for I would stultify my under- 
standing if I did not. I am aware that outside of 
this mysterious source of information, this " spiritual 
environment," that the subject suggests, is not 
proved; so, in a sense, to assume it, is begging the 
question; but if it be admitted as a verity, as the 
Bible, and as poetry in general is authority for, 
" that w T e are surrounded by a countless multitude of 
witnesses," or, in the words of the poet, that 

"The spiritual world 
JLies all about us, and its avenues 
Are open to the unseen feet of phantoms 



20 INTRODUCTORY. 

That come and go, and we perceive them not, 
Save by their influence." 

That is, make the scriptural or sentimental idea a 
matter of fact, then one must explain the phenomena 
of modern Spiritualism as being what it claims to be, 
— the spirits of the departed, as poetically expressed 
in the following lines : — 

" There is a world of spirits fair 

All around us and unseen ; 
And those whom we call ' dead ' are there 
With all that erst on earth hath been." 

As I believe in this spiritual environment, I be- 
lieve the claim that in every case this "Psychic 
Force " makes, which it made eighteen hundred years 
ago, and which in the modern form it makes today. 
Perhaps the older affirmation will express the idea 
as well as any other, — so I will quote that, where 
John the Revelator, in the presence of the angel, 
which it seems was only a departed spirit, said (Rev. 
xix:10): "And I fell at his feet to worship him. 
And he said unto me, See thou do it not : I am thy 
fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the tes- 
timony of Jesus : worship God." 

I do not know anything in the whole realm of 
physics, or what are called real things, more surely 
than I know that there is this spiritual surrounding 
which is taught in the Bible, and taught by modern 
Spiritualism. 

The human intellect, as Ernest Renan says, is infi- 
del; it asks questions, and so it should; but the 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

heart is the true believer ; hence poetry bubbles out 
of it full of nutritious sentiment that ought to be 
true, and what the sensuous proof, through modern 
Spiritualism, makes literal and true. Here is one of 
its expressions ; what a dreary world this would be 
if it were not a hope and a possibility : — 

"Oh! Heaven is nearer than mortals think, 
When they look with a trembling dread 
At the misty future that stretches on 
From the silent home of the dead." 

In corresponding with this aged but strong-minded 
man, I found myself drawn to him, and though he 
was at that period of life that demonstration of this 
matter was soon to be in the order of nature, I felt 
moved to be very open and frank with him, — am 
astonished sometimes that I made the effort I did to 
justify my belief and to defend my perspicuity. Per- 
haps I was influenced to do so ; knowing what I do, 
I am obliged to believe that there is this influence, 
or watchful supervision of the world of spirits on or 
over the affairs of every-day life. At any rate, writ- 
ing, as I generally do, to be printed rather than for 
autographical correspondence, it was singular that I 
wrote this man so extensively as I did, and which, I 
trust, as I have said, has benefited both of us. 

When I received his last letter, which only ante- 
dates this chapter a few days, it seemed to call for 
this, may I say, " diffusion of knowledge." If what 
I had written to him in this fugitive way seemed to 
him valuable enough to say, rather urgingly, that I 



22 INTRODUCTORY. 

ought to print it, and knowing his sincerity when he 
says in the last letter, to which I have referred: "I 
am not well, and so cannot answer your last, but my 
main object in this is to make a suggestion, and it is 
this : that you gather what you have written to me 
on this subject, including some of your experiences 
from which you so freely draft, into a book, which 
would be of a very interesting and readable charac- 
ter, and just what thoughtful people want to read. 
Is not this a suggestion worthy of your serious 
thought? I have not less than fourteen articles from 
you that, of themselves, would make an attractive 
volume. Your letters to me on the subject are very 
valuable, and are worthy of a more extended peru- 
sal/' 

It would seem, then, by a person competent to 
judge, that some of my thoughts, experiences, and 
hurried reflections have a value. I have had other 
similar suggestions from various sources. A letter 
from Alabama, just received, written in a very per- 
suasive manner, " to put some of my thoughts into a 
book form on this subject, in which we are all so in- 
terested, and know so little about, and I feel, when- 
ever I read anything of yours, I am getting an 
honest and intelligent view of the subject from your 
standpoint." These letters, coming so together, 
seemed to say to me that I had better venture to do 
so* Perhaps the intimation to do so dates higher 
than the State of New York, or of Alabama, or other 
mundane localities. We do not always know the 
sources of our inspiration. I am inclined to think 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

our thoughts and acts, great and small, are the result 
of influences from the world of spirits, so near and 
yet so remote. It seems to be asking the reader to 
take it for granted that the claim is proved before I 
begin my story, so I will close this preliminary chap- 
ter, it having done its work by embodying the rea- 
sons for issuing the book. Whether there are any 
occult or mystic influences mixed up with the reasons 
mentioned can be better told after it is finished than 
now in its preliminary pages. I am inclined to 
indorse most heartily, from close observation of the 
matter, the affirmation of the quaint Thoreau, some- 
times called the Walden hermit: "We should con- 
sider that the flow of thought is more like a tidal 
wave than a prone river, and is the result of a celes- 
tial influence, not of any declivity in its channel." 



" Where are now the fabled beings that peopled space, 
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, 
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
Or chasm, or wat'ry depths? All these have vanished ; 
TUey live no longer in the faith of reason ! 
But still the heart doth need a language ; still 
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names, 
And to yon starry world they now are gone ; 
Spirits, or gods, that used to share this earth 
With man as with their friends. 
Oh, never more will I blame his faith, 
In the might of stars and angels 
This visible nature and this common world 
Is all too narrow." — Coleridge. 



25 



II. 

its RAisosr d'etre. 

A substitute for faith. — The Bible a sealed book 
without it. — With it, a rational one. 

Modern Spiritualism is not so much a matter of 
argument as it is a matter of experience; still some 
may like to know a little of the experience that has 
made me (who am something of a worldly man, or 
one who has touched the world rather broadly) one 
of its adherents. Its truth, or foundation in fact, 
came to me in such a perfectly satisfactory manner 
over a quarter of a century ago that it established it- 
self in my mind, and has been my religion ever since. 
No one can foretell with certainty how the future 
may find him, but I think it one of the certain things 
in my future career that I will not backslide or fall 
from its grace ; that it has come to me to stay, and, 
as it is my religion now, so will it continue to be. 

It certainly ought to be true. If death ended all, 
and there was no future conscious life to departed 
human beings, that when a man died that was the 
end of him, certainly to most people this life would 
be a failure. A continuation of a man's career 

27 



28 SHADOWS. 

beyond the grave, from a human standpoint, is 
demanded on the score of justice. The Christian, or 
civilized world, sees that everj T where, and rests its 
hope on Divine revelation, or God's word, for assur- 
ance. If the Bible were God's word, that would be 
an assurance. That holy and very valuable old book 
has, however, a very human flavor. God may speak 
in it, or through it, but certainly not in any real or 
literal manner. He speaks through it only as the 
Great First Cause speaks in and through everything 
in the world around us, and in the heavens above us. 
Men in old times, as now, may have been inspired, 
and uttered or written wise thoughts even beyond 
their own normal powers, many of them worthy of 
high sources, but certainly no one in this age will 
consider the Bible as God's word literally in any 
sense, even admitting it to be the most valuable book 
extant. My experience in spiritual manifestations 
has enhanced its value to me, because I see permeat- 
ing that book, from Genesis to Revelations, evidences 
of an intelligent spiritual environment, interested in 
and influencing mankind, and that, also, is the teach- 
ing of modern Spiritualism today. Expressed by a 
modern poet thus : — 

" The spirit world, around this world of sense, 
Rests like an atmosphere, and everywhere 
Wafts through these earthly mists aud vapors dense, 
A vital breath of more ethereal air." 

In an age when this world was the center of the 
universe, and the sun a ball of molten iron about the 



ITS eAison d'etre. 29 

size of the territory of Greece, these influences, or 
" strange visitants "' from this environment, were mis- 
understood, intentionally or otherwise. In one case, 
it will be remembered, a correction was made by the 
angel, or divine messenger, or departed spirit, by his 
saying to the saintly apostle : " I am one of thy breth- 
ren of the prophets." At last we are learning to take 
the spirit of that book and not its letter, but that does 
not make the basis of a future life any better, or any 
more certain, for the definition of the spirit of it will 
vary in differently constituted minds; in the last 
analysis it becomes nothing but human testimony, 
and of no authority. In fact, the Bible is a sealed 
book without modern Spiritualism. Interpreted by 
it, there is proof that man survives death, but that 
makes one a Spiritualist. Outside of modern Spirit- 
ualism there is no proof that the man survives the 
death of his body. Helped by this later light, many 
things in the Bible, and outside of it, become point- 
ers, or proofs, of man's survival, but that aid is the 
property of and belongs to modern Spiritualism. 

To make a future conscious life certain one must 
return from the dead, or a message must come 
from one who has ended his mortal career, and it 
must be unmistakable. 

" Ah ! blow me the scent of one lily, to tell 

That it grew outside of the world at most; 
Ah ! show me a plume to touch, or a shell 
That whispers of some unearthly coast," 

is what the hungry human heart says, and has a right 
to say, and that is what modern Spiritualism claims 



30 SHADOWS. 

to do, and what it certainly has done to me. It is 
the object of these chapters, which I have called 
" Shadows," to try to establish that claim. I hardly 
expect to do it, for the reason already stated, that 
the subject is more a matter of experience than of 
argument ; but we will do the best we can, and we 
will certainly be truthful, 

"and give to our airy ' something ' 
A local habitation and a name." 

Intuitive souls all over the world, and all through 
the ages, have felt their immortality, and the earth 
itself is ominous with the idea. The poet interviews 
it with his soul, and utters his thought in verse, 
speaking wiser than he knows, and thus often breath- 
ing the spirit of man's post-mortem life ; hungry 
humanity reads the sentiment, and wishes it was real, 
as well as poetic. One message from the world of 
spirits, one soul returning after having passed through 
death, would change poetry into truth, and bring the 
heart's intuitions into the domain of the positive. 
Until that message comes, or that "departed" one 
returns, the woman of Endor may raise Samuel, 
Moses and Elias be transfigured before Peter, James 
and John and the Revelator bow before the angel, 
and Hamlet may see the ghost of the royal Dane 
armed, cap-a-pie, and Longfellow may tell in his 
pensive, almost truthful, way that 

" Through the open doors 
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide 
With feet that make no noise upon the floors. 



ITS RAISON D'ETRE. 31 

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair, 
Along the passages they come and go, 

Impalpable impressions on the air, 

A sense of something moving to and fro ; " 

and nervous women may see sainted shadows pass 
the open doors of darkened rooms that even prove 
sometimes to be premonitions ; but they are all 
" such stuff as dreams are made of," whether records 
of revelation or drafts of imagination bodying forth 
the forms of things unseen for the poet's pen to 
mold into shape ; they are punctured bubbles, van- 
ishing in the light of reason and common sense, and 
are at best but what the following agnostic lines ex- 
press : — 

" The hollow sea- shell, which for years hath stood 
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear 
Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear 
The faint, far murmur of the distant flood. 
We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood 
In our own veins, impetuous and near, 
And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear. 
So in my heart I hear, as in a shell, 

Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. 
Thou fool ! this echo is a cheat as well, 
The hum of earthly instincts ; and we crave 
A world unreal as the shell-heard sea." 

If modern Spiritualism has any basis, any raison 
d'etre in its claim, that there are messages from the 
loved and lost, that the spirit world can, and does, 
more or less intelligently, communicate with the inhab- 
itants of earth ; and if this is true, the ideal world be- 
comes more or less a real one, many a fascinating fable 
becomes a reality, and it puts a torch behind the cur- 



32 SHADOWS. 

tain in the picture of human life, making it a trans- 
parency of light and warmth, as well as beauty. 
And we can feel it to be really so when the poet 

says : — 

" That ever near us, though unseen, 
The dear immortals tread ; 
For all the boundless universe 
Is life, — there are no dead." 






"Can it be true, this wondrous story old, 
Of fair green pastures where the waters flow 
J.n sweetest music over golden sands, 
Where we shall meet again the lost of earth? 

Can such a country be 
As this of which our hopeful spirits dream, 
For which we yearn, and hope, and trust, and pray 
Such prayers to Him, the Being Infinite? 
Oh ! can it be that we shall grasp again 
The cold white hands which here we fold to rest 
Upon the breast, thrilling with life anew? 
And feel again upon our lips and brow 
The kisses of the lips that have grown cold 
While kissing us? And is the grave 
Only a narrow gate, through which we pass 
To peace and rest and calm? " — Anonymous. 



33 



III. 

THE GATES AJAR. 

Explaining why the writer is a Spiritualist, and why 
obliged to be one. 

When death entered my family, we had three 
young children ; the oldest was a girl. She was six 
years old when death took her. I had a religious 
experience in my early life, was a church-member for 
a decade. At the period of this grief I was, and had 
been for many years, a materialist. When this little 
girl's light went out, leaving us in the dark, I felt 
that that was the end of her. The mother took the 
loss naturally harder than I did. I was, and am, of 
a philosophical turn of mind, and considered this the 
fate and the end of all ; but it had come early to this 
bright flower in the garden of our home. As there 
was no help for it, it must be submitted to. This 
was our grief. The mother, it may have been provi- 
dential, and, from later experiences, I think it was, 
came accidentally in contact with some of those who 
were interested in the new light of modern Spiritual- 
ism, and seeing a medium was suggested to her. As 
the drowning man catches at a straw, she caught at 

35 



36 SHADOWS. 

this. Afterwards, when hearing her report of what 
she had heard and seen in her contact with the sub- 
ject from time to time, it seemed silly business, and 
made no impression upon me ; but I saw no harm in 
it, as it occupied her mind, and gave her something 
to think of. My wife was not reconciled to the loss 
of our child, and looking into this matter might be a 
harmless benefit to her, but otherwise I saw no sense 
in it, and certainly none in the phenomena, as she 
related to me from time to time what took place. I 
could not see anything sensible in supposing spirits 
made raps, or of the tipping of tables, or any percep- 
tion of clairvoyant images of little girls that nobody 
could see but the medium, or woman who called her- 
self a seeress. I think it grieved my wife that I did 
not interest myself more, and it seemed to partake a 
little of cold-heartedness on my part. She was wrong 
there, for I was all feeling, but felt, as the majority 
feel today, that the subject was beneath the notice or 
attention of sensible people. My wife having confi- 
dence in me and my acuteness, thought I could and 
ought to settle this matter as either something or 
nothing. I felt, as a matter of course, that it was a 
delusion. I hated to stoop to conquer it, and I saw 
it was occupying her mind, and it was, at best, an 
innocent amusement. This interest continued many 
weeks, even a month or two, and was my wife's prin- 
cipal thought, and I hated to disabuse her of it, and 
yet, from what I heard or read in the papers, I began 
to have fears that it possibly might be an injury, 
and I had begun to think to myself how I could 



THE GATES AJAR. 37 

adroitly puncture it so that she could see it herself 
to be a delusion without any overt act of mine, for 
I felt that I would be belittling myself to meddle with 
it as I would to go to a Gypsy to get my fortune told. 

Early one afternoon, just as she was going out for 
a walk or a call, she met her sister on the steps just 
coming to see her. After exchanging a few words, 
my wife said to her sister that she was going to see 
a medium, and asked her if she did not want to go 
to. The sister had never been at or heard of such 
sittings, rather liked the idea, and they went together, 
it seems to me it was to a Mrs. Leeds, of whom my 
wife had incidentally heard. On reaching the house in 
Carver Street, they found Mrs. Leeds was absent on 
a visit to Judge Edmonds, in Xew York. They were, 
of course, disappointed, and, turning to go away, 
they asked the girl who had waited on the door if 
she knew any good medium, and she gave them the 
address of Mrs. Hayden, of Hay ward Place, and the 
ladies went directly there. 

I am being very minute in relating this occurrence, 
as it turned out to be the "Dawning Li^ht" to me, 
and would to anyone under the same circumstances, 
as it covers the whole ground claimed by modern 
Spiritualism, and every solution for it conceivable, 
and nothing but an admittance of the truth of it, as 
founded in fact, can explain this one experience. 

I never conversed with an intelligent person who 
did not admit that it compelled a belief, if the facts 
were as I have stated them. Hence my being so 
particular in this narrative which I offer, as I do in 



38 SHADOWS. 

fact the whole of this book as well as this chapter, 
as the exact truth. 

I was left at home, as these ladies departed, I 
knowing nothing of their intentions. I did not know 
where they were going, or that they had started 
on a spiritual expedition. What I have said in the 
foregoing lines I learned afterwards, and the follow- 
ing cogitative and circumstantial statement will ex- 
plain it : — 

I was in my library up stairs, and alone. I had 
some writing to do, but the subject of spiritual mani- 
festations was for the moment occupying my mind, 
and in their connection with my wife who had just 
gone out, as I have described, and I began to cogi- 
tate. I said to myself, ought I not to look into this 
matter, and why is it necessary to go to a stranger to 
get a message from any of my departed frienda? 
That has, thought I, an unreasonable look to begin 
with. I had forgotten, or it did not occur to me, 
that King Saul, when in grief and sore distressed, had 
to go in that way to the woman of Endor before he 
could connect himself with or get a message from 
his departed friend Samuel. In beginning this cogi- 
tation, it rather appeared to me that if my little 
daughter was alive, though invisible, or any spirit of 
my loved and lost relatives or friends had any mes- 
sage for me, here and now was the time and place for 
the manifestations. Here in this room is the old 
table, and on it the old Bible, printed in 1751, that 
old familiar faces of my youth sat at and turned the 
leaves of the book, and show and explain the pic- 



THE GATES AJAR. 39 

tures in it, and I began to grow sentimental with tlie 
pleasures of memory. I seemed to grow hospitable 
to the idea, or rather to the images of these old faces 
that were as vivid, in my mind, as the old book was 
that had outlasted them to my senses. I believed 
everything was subject to law, and that it was pos- 
sible that the room was then full of spirits, though my 
intellect was infidel to the idea ; still in my heart there 
arose a sacred voice which said it was a possible thing. 
Perhaps there is something wanting which I have 
not got, thought I, which, if I had, or was in the 
right condition, these old familiar faces, or some of 
them, might issue out of the silent air, or in some 
way manifest or reach me. Some remembrances of 
family love, that need not be mentioned now, but 
may be before this book is ended, had some effect 
upon me, and I began to dwell on it in my imagina- 
tion, — build castles in the air, as some call it, — I did 
alone what I would have been ashamed to have done 
in any company. I said to the circumambient, vacant 
air vocally, if there are any beings present who 
can hear me (thinking then of my child, Hattie, 
and my sister), I wish you would be present when 
my wife attends any of these sittings, and will you 
send me a message? and remembering I had had 
messages now and then, — love-sending, or remem- 
brances which had no convincing character to them, 
and what anyone could say, and not be out of the 
way ; so I said, send me this message, — which I then 
repeated. I will not repeat here the message I asked 
for ; it was characteristic of me, and was religiously 



40 SHADOWS. 

asked for, but it might be construed humorously, and 
in the connection seem frivolous, for though I am 
constitutionally light-hearted and cheerful, I have a 
very pensive undertone, and on this subject, whatever 
may be my manner, I am at heart always serious. 

It occurred to me, also, that spirits might see and 
not hear, and, having a pen before me, I wrote the 
message as well as spoke it, and folded up the paper 
on which it was written, and put it into my desk, 
where no one could see or get it. I certainly did 
not expect any response. I did not ask for it with 
any faith. I do not kuow as if I ever would have 
thought of it again, except that the subject, in its 
connection with my wife, was often in my mind, and 
this trifling circumstance would, therefore, not have 
been forgotten. I however had the feeling that I 
would give all I had in the world if there had been 
any foundation of truth in this matter, which, how- 
ever, did not seem to me at all probable or possible. 

I did not know, as I have already said, where my 
wife had gone. What I had said, thought, and done 
alone in my library was known only to myself. Late 
in the afternoon I went out, and on my return at 
tea-time, the first thing my wife said to me was : 
"There is a message for you from Hattie," handing 
me a small, rolled-up strip of paper, she looking at 
me, all alive with expectation, for she knew, under 
any circumstances, the message would please me, as 
a definitely characteristic one, of or for me. I un- 
rolled, read it, and found a long string of letters not 
divided into words, but it was the message exactly, 



THE GATES AJAR. 41 

when divided off into words, that I had asked for a 
few hours before. 

Now, suppose I am telling the exact truth, setting 
nothing down for effect or for argument, and I assure 
the reader such is the fact exactly as I have stated 
it, — what else can it be but the message from a 
spirit? It purported to come from Hattie; but she 
could not write. She was a little girl only a few 
months over six years old ; but that is a matter of 
minor importance. Did it come from the other 
world ? That settled, settles the whole matter ; and 
how could it have been anything else ? This matter 
being so important, some reflections and deductions 
will not be superfluous. 

There was certainly no mind-reading (mind-read- 
ing seems to be the bete noir of the skeptic in this 
department of thought), for I concocted the message 
alone, and I was not present at this Endoric inter- 
view. No one knew but myself what I had done but 
the " circumambient air," or the invisible dwellers in 
it, and of course around me. My wife and her sister 
knew nothing of it, and if the medium had been a 
fraud and had made the raps herself, she must have 
had a royal road of information to have got cogniz- 
ance of my act or wishes. I did not know there was 
such a woman in the world. It was the first time 
my wife had ever been at her house, and did not 
know she was going there when she left home. The 
reader will remember she got the address from a 
domestic at a house where she had never been, and 
was unknown, and Hay ward Place was over a mile off 



42 SHADOWS. 

from where I lived, and had had this private colloquy 
with what I now consider my spiritual surrounding, 
or environment. 

So, look at the matter in any light one chooses, if 
the writer's head is level, and is telling the truth, 
there certainly was a message from " over the river." 
If anyone doubts me, thinks I am a special pleader 
for the cause, and am overstating, when I assure him 
I am exact and truthful, then this book of "shad- 
ows " is not for him, and he may as well skip me and 
pass on to something that, to him, will be more inter- 
esting or instructive. 

As I have said, I feel like being very particular, 
and, perhaps, long-drawn out in this statement more 
than I intend to be in the chapters that follow, for 
this one experience is, in the writer's mind, a clincher, 
so to speak, and settles the whole question in his 
mind affirmatively. I will now close it with a brief 
account of the sitting itself. 

These ladies, when they reached the medium's 
house in Hayward Place, found there the lady, and 
stated what they had come for, and were invited to 
sit down at the table used for the purpose of spirit 
communications, the medium sitting at it also. The 
sister held the pencil, — she had been requested to 
by my wife before entering, to see if it made any 
difference. Raps were at once heard, the spirits an- 
swering yes and no to questions. Soon the alphabet 
was used, and as the letter wanted was reached a rap 
was heard, and thus some singular but very true 
messages were given intelligently in this way, but 



THE GATES AJAR. 43 

they need not be recorded here. After a little while 
the letters of a message read : "Hattie is here : " My 
wife said: "I am glad you have come; have you 
anything to say to your father ? " — and three raps 
indicated "Yes." The alphabet was then used, and 
the letters noted down as the raps signified the right • 
one ; and, when finished, it was a string of letters, as 
I have said, not divided into words, but which were 
easily read, particularly by my wife, who saw that it 
was somewhat characteristic, and knew it would 
please me, and perhaps be a test. She did not know 
until she had got home and given it to me, and I had 
told her the facts, that I had asked the spirits to send 
the message, and the string of letters written down 
-in that way, — the letter wanted being rapped at 
when it was reached, — and in their wholeness was 
the message I had asked for in the manner stated. 

As a finish to this chapter, let me close with a 
suggestive verse or two that I find in my scrap-book, 
and then the reader can do his own thinking : — 

" But, hark ! I hear a gentle rap, 
Most strange to human ears ! 
May it not be some message sent 

From those bright-shining spheres? 

The questions put, the answers come 

As plain as A, B, C, 
Which tell me that departed friends 

Are coming back to me. 

No voice I hear, no form behold, 

And yet I feel impressed 
The loving message surely comes 

From loved ones gone to rest." 



" I have reason to think it no delusion — 

And therefore fancy that my child is near, 
And so I feel amid this world's confusion 

The influence of her sereener sphere. 
I doubt if she is in the church-yard sleeping, 

And have at last become aware 
That she eluded us while we were weeping, 
And that my child was never buried there." 

— Anonymous. 

45 



IV. 

FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITS. 

Its permanent entrance into the writer s mental life. 
— Details of the interview. 

When I received and read the message that in this 
mysterious way (as I have stated in the preceding 
chapter) had come from the spirit of my little daugh- 
ter that I had seen laid in the tomb a few months 
before, it surprised me very much, it was certainly so 
unexpected. I knew I held the secret as surely as 
Junius did of his "letters," but here was my mes- 
sage, word for word. My request must have been 
heard by the invisible intelligences in that room 
where I was sitting and cogitating alone, who must 
have known the location of my wife, where she had 
gone, for I did not, so they could not have got 
it from my mind, and who there, at that sitting, 
answered me. Does it not look as if, all unseen by 
me, I was open and visible to some of my departed 
friends in the spirit world ? as if they, knowing my 
wishes, had said : u Let us go to that seance where 
his wife, our sister or mother had gone, and see if 
we cannot prove to him that he is encompassed 

47 



48 SHADOWS. 

round about with intelligences ; " or, as expressed in 
the words of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe : — 

" It is a beautiful belief, 

That ever round our head 
Are hovering with viewless wings 
The spirits of the dead." 

I do not know why I should be so much favored 
when so many better and wiser men, as hungry for 
the truth as I am, have been slighted. And then I 
have asked a great many times since for a similar 
manifestation for just such a purpose, but the "vacant 
air " has been deaf. Angels' visits of the kind most 
wanted are, indeed, few and far between; perhaps I 
have had my share of attention. Here is the fact 
once anyway; perhaps that was a compensation for 
other deficiencies, but that is not the point to be 
treated now. 

I have had a quarter of a century of experience in 
spiritual matters. A large percentage of it is of no 
account. The identification of a spirit is a very 
difficult thing to do. I have had hundreds of proofs 
of spirits communicating with me to one of identifi- 
cation. I think I could discount seventy-five per cent 
of my experiences in this line of thought, and the 
substance of the whole might be included in the 
remaining one-quarter, oT twenty-five per cent. Some 
may think I have wasted a great deal of time in wash- 
ing, so to speak, in this lean gulch, and the amount of 
gold gathered has been small for the time and labor 
spent; but what I have got is what I want, and what 



FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITS. 49 

the world wants today, more than anything else, and 
is not to be found outside of "these diggings." 
Where in the whole world of thought can one find 
such a nugget of value as the message and the cir- 
cumstances of which I have spoken in the last chap- 
ter. If it had never been duplicated (and it never 
has exactly, and seldom anything near it) it would, 
as I have said, have settled the matter in my own 
mind. I feel thankful for succeeding so well the first 
time, for it has encouraged me in years of lean perse- 
verance, so that I never was discouraged, even if not 
always satisfied ; but all along the years of my expe- 
rience in these matters have I found (though some- 
times it may have been at long intervals) nuggets of 
value that are evidences of the truth fur which I was 
seeking. 

When this message from Hattie came to me, I 
went at once to see this modern woman of Endor, to 
see if she could raise any of my Samuels. I went 
into her parlor a stranger both to her and to the sub- 
ject. She was sitting on a sofa in her modestly-fur- 
nished room ; near the center of it was a round, 
mahogany table. I hardly knew what to say, or 
what to do. It was new business to me. The lady 
helped me by saying : "Do you want to talk with the 
spirits? " I said : " Most certainly." She remarked, 
in a courteous manner, that there were a great many 
here, or that I had brought a great many with me. 
She said : " Take a seat at the table," pointing to the 
one I had noticed, which was about three feet from 
her. I did so, moving it a little so as to detect any 



50 SHADOWS. 

deceptive mechanism, for I was of a suspicious 
nature, at least in a matter of this kind. She, notic- 
ing it, said : " That 's right ; put the table anywhere 
you please." Her manners pleased me ; she seemed 
honest ; I was satisfied, and sat down to it, my hands 
resting on it. 

It seems now that I ought to narrate, in tolerable 
detail, the circumstances of this my first interview 
with the spirits of the other world ; but it seems to 
me also that they ought to have been on some ele- 
vated matters, and not at all common-place, and 
which seem almost, when dealing with the dead, or 
rather " departed," trifling. The query arises in my 
mind now whether I had not better compose a presen- 
tation analogously true, but one more in conformity 
with one's expectation from such a supposed source, 
the heavenly world. I think this would be the way 
usually such a matter would be given to the public, 
and not draw out of obscurity the domestic social 
life and names of quiet, unknown people. Yet, if a 
person that I respected, and was worth listening to, 
was talking to me, I would want the simple facts, and 
when given, as they have been colloqualty often by 
me, they have always been impressively interesting, 
and as I am with sincerity, and also simplicity, now 
talking with the reader, I think the literal state- 
ment, with this apology, will be the best one. My 
hesitancy is owing in a measure from feeling, or did 
feel at the time, and as others do at that stage of 
their belief, that the spirit world was a sanctified 
and holy place, and that one must feel serious or 



FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITS. 51 

religious when dealing with it. There was nothing 
serious or religious in the pabulum that then came 
to me from that world of light. Yet there was a 
charming and complicated truthfulness in it, and 
that, after all, is the main thing. Some one has said 
the laws of crystalization, manifested in the freezing 
of ditch water, are as interesting a study as they are 
in the crystalization of the diamond ; so I trust in 
this trifle that I propose to relate, as the illustrative 
point, — the underlying laws, — will make my simple 
water diamondish in character. 

I came to this medium's house under the assumed 
name of Johnson, and, hearing the raps, was told 
they were the spirits, and that I could ask them any 
questions. I began by asking the invisible if they 
knew me, and the reply being "Yes," I said : "What 
is my name?" and the answer was, "John Wether- 
bee." I was both surprised and interested, for, as I 
have said, I was entirely unknown to the medium, 
and though she sat very near the table, I could see 
she did not touch it, and if she had, under all the 
circumstances, it would have made no difference. 
I then asked : " Will you tell me who you are ? " 
And the raps spelled the name of " Susan Gibson." 

I was expecting it would have been Adeline, Hattie, 
or some other near spirit, and I did not know any 
Susan Gibson ; and hoping to bring her to mind, 
among other questions, I said : "Where did you die?" 
The reply was : "Providence." That fact did not 
help any, but was interesting, as I had relatives in 
that city, and had visited it a great deal. I then 



52 SHADOWS. 

asked : "When did you die ? " And the reply was : 
"About nine years ago." This was interesting, for 
my sister was living there ; had been married a year 
or more before that time. My unmarried sister was 
a guest of hers much of the time, and for the year or 
two prior to the nine years mentioned by the spirit, 
I was there near half of my time, and so I concluded 
that Susan Gibson might have been some person that 
I had met there that I had forgotten, though it seems 
she had not forgotten me. I then asked the spirit: 
" Do you know my sister ? " The reply was : " Yes." 
"What is her name?" And the letters, in reply, 
rapped out were, ELI. Noticing them thus, I 
thought to myself she is mistaken ; it is going to be 
Eliza or Elizabeth, and I have no sister by that 
name. I said nothing, and the next letter was an 0, 
then a T, and the rapping stopped. At first, I did 
not recognize it, but as quickly as I saw it read, 
Eliot, then I saw it was my sister's name, Elliott. 
The spirit had spelled the name in the usual waj r , 
but our Elliotts spelled it with two Z's and two £'s, 
and in the diminished form I at first did not recog- 
nize it. It was far better in the way manifested, for 
it showed the spirit was not getting it from my mind. 
I then saw that that w r as the name of my living sister; 
but I wanted the name of my dead one, or who was 
now a spirit, and the reply was: "Adeline," which 
was correct. 

Speaking of this to my sister in Providence, I 
found her no better off than I was ; she could remem- 
ber no Susan Gibson among her acquaintances, but 



FIE ST INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITS. 53 

in the early part of her married life — say ten or 
eleven years before this interview — she had a domes- 
tie living with her by the name of Susan ; it might 
have been Susan Gibson, but she did not know 
whether it was or not. As the communication was 
so correct, even free from any mind-reading, it seems 
to me reasonable to suppose it was the Susan that 
was the domestic. Imagine the situation, and see 
how natural it is, on that basis. She was the family- 
servant of Mrs. Elliott, my sister visiting her, whose 
name was Adeline, and I was often there. I asked 
her, as a spirit, for my sister's name. I was thinking 
of Adeline, who was a spirit, but the spirit of the 
domestic said "Eliot," speaking of her mistress by 
the name she was known, and then of Adeline, as 
she would have been known in that household. In 
the long, tedious way of getting messages, with the 
aid of an alphabet, one cannot use superfluous words 
any more than one does in a telegram. If Susan had 
been giving those messages in her living state, or a 
free translation of them into a polite vernacular, 
they would read: "Your living sister's name is Mrs. 
Eliot, and the sister who is now a spirit her name is 
Miss Adeline." We must understand the superflu- 
ous appellations Mrs. and Miss are understood, and 
not necessarily expressed in spiritual as well as in 
telegraphic messages. 



" It is the hour of prayer. All day the din of active life over- 
whelms, and the latent soul speaks not. Thankful are we for 
the return of evening, bringing us back to serious thought, 
when hearts speak and voices oft are silent, — vain wanderings 
o'er a sea of thoughts we cannot fathom. It is the hour when 
children talk with angels. It is the hour we feel our immortal- 
ity. It is the hour when old familiar faces look at us from the 
dark corners of the room. Old portraits on the wall attract 
expression, and the recognitions make us feel their living pres- 
ence. Can the witching hour of twilight make vivid the shadows 
of loved faces who dwell beyond the vale, — whose silent voices 
ignite thought, whose footsteps leave no track behind?" 

— Shadows. 
55 



V. 



LIFE S AFTERNOON. 



The "D atoning Light" seems to be a loon or consola- 
tion to advancing years. — An extension-claim. 

" The day is past and gone, 

The evening shades appear ; 
Oh, may we all remember well 
The night of death draws near." 

There is a religious association that comes up in 
the mind with this oft-repeated and oft-sung hymn 
to which no reference is now intended. Take it as 
it reads, — not its associations, or what in a pious direc- 
tion it may suggest, — how differently the thought 
strikes the mind of a youth of twenty from what it 
does the adult, or mature one of sixty ! 

The grim messenger, as death is sometimes called, 
is near youth, of course ; but when one is thus early 
called, it seems somewhat out of order, — a mistake 
somewhere, a payment anticipated, one made before 
it was due. When the noon of a man's life is past, 
or if it is four o'clock or five or six in the afternoon 
of his life, the sun nearing his western horizon, — the 
"Night of Death," — then is a vivid point; it seems 

57 



58 SHADOWS. 

near or nearer then, mathematically, no matter how 
much of time there still may be left for him. 

It is wisely provided that youth and young man- 
hood should be hopeful, and even thoughtless, and 
death but lightly considered. With sixty years of 
probable life before a man, or only six, the future 
prospect differs. When one reads a thoughtful verse 
like this, which is so suggestive and truthful also, — 

" The end of life comes nearer, 

Every year ; 
The friends left become dearer, 

Every year ; 
And the goal of all that 's mortal, 
Opens wider still its portal 
To the land of the immortal, 

Every year," 

it will strike the mind of a man who, on the princi- 
ple of life assurance or of annuities, has fifty years 
before him very differently from one whose chances 
are but for five, or ten, on the statistical ground. It 
is well that it is so, for the youth has the world's 
affairs on his hands, the old man more naturally 
begins to set his house in order. 

Modern Spiritualism then seems to come as a boon 
or a comfort to old people. It is a beautiful and 
inspiring thought to the young also, especially if the 
pale angel is beckoning to one. These " anticipated 
payments " are very common. There comes a time 
also when the end of life is falling due, in the natu- 
ral order of things. Three-score-and-ten is an indefi- 
nite point in one's lifet-ime, though definitely ex- 



life's afternoon. 59 

, but is reached by all, like a promissory note 
falling due. It is only a question of time. 

How cheering, then, the thought that the little 
span of life that a man sees before him when he 
reaches nearer and nearer this indefinite but certain 
point is extended into a perpetuity — a continuous 
life — under new conditions. That is what modern 
Spiritualism teaches, and. if based on truth, what an 
acquisition it is ! 

In the light of some facts, which will appear in the 
course of these chapters, how can it be anything tdse 
but what it claims to be ? This extension of life is 
not exactly an ethereal one. but one as real to the 
as this one is that we are now living. It 
seems to be a very human life, if not a mortal one. 
Our aims and tastes, and sometimes our misfortunes 
here, are continued there on, perhaps, a higher plane 
ntlook. the misfortunes here being the beginnings 
of what may be successes there, and possibly view- 
ing them retrospectively may be the most lust: 
ones of our human experience. To be sure thei 
no ticketing: our bao^a^e through the gates of death 
to the summer land. All our wealth is left on this 
side of the grave, — useful here, of no account there. 

What empty ur rich people — even 

millionaires — must be when discretely separated 
from their possessions ! H«;>w important for such. 
and all. to keep a sinking-fund of enduring posses- 
sions as this life's years glide by that will be income- 
lucing (using our vernacular) when this life's 
fitful fever is over ! It may not be out of place to 



60 SHADOWS. 

quote a communication that this latter remark sug- 
gests that came to me once through the medium 
Mary Hardy, she being unconscious, — in a trance. 

This was from an aged, well-known citizen, an 
intimate friend of mine, who had departed from this 
life some years before. Besides the communication, 
I could give some circumstances that insure its gen- 
uineness, but I must refrain from doing so here for 
the sake of brevity. Please take my word for it, and 
read the characteristic message. I do not quote it as 
evidence of spirit existence, though I receive it as 
such myself, from the circumstances referred to 
attending it, but which would not be of any interest 
to the general reader. The communication itself 
will be illustrative of the idea above suggested, of 
keeping a " sinking-fund " that will be, in a spiritual 
sense, income-producing "in the sweet bj^-and-bye." 

" Summer-Land securities, like the securities current on 
'change, do not come by the asking, or by inheritance, they 
all have to be earned. A man may be poor in one and may 
be rich in the other. The former boil no pots, and in the 
affairs of life, or the settlement of estates, are not counted 
as assets. Successful business men often make a poor show- 
ing when they close in on the mortal and open out into the 
immortal state. 

" There is but one way by which the gilt-edged securities 
of earth can be converted into the gilt-edged of the Summer 
Land, and that is by unselfish uses. Both kinds are in your 
market now ; the enduring find comparatively but few tak- 
ers, the passing are in active demand. If I had known ten 
years ago what I know now, I would have left less money 



life's afternoon. 61 

to my heirs, but I would have been more affluent now. I 
did, you know, an unselfish act of considerable magnitude, 
and worried soma about it. I was glad before I died that I 
did it, and I am gladder still now. It has proved to be the 
best investment I have now in this Summer Land, and it 
makes me quite comfortable." 

The principal feature in the teachings of modern 
Spiritualism is that the grave is not merely a hole in 
the ground, or blind alley, but, figuratively speaking, 
is a thoroughfare opening out into eternal light. 
Our night of death comes, but our life is not ended. 
Our day may have ended and its work done, but we 
awake and find it the morning of a new day. 

I do not know how it is with other people, but to 
me this extension of our life beyond the valley and 
the shadow of death, and free from its anxieties and 
troubles, and yet retaining our identities, or consci- 
ous ego, — our personality, — with a busy and pro- 
gressive future, is a joyous vision, an inheritance of 
priceless value. 

It changes the whole aspect of human life, and 
certainly adds sunshine to the remainder of this, 
which cannot now be, to this writer, but a decade or 
two at most. Though, as I have said, this sometimes 
called the "Dawning Light" is the bright gift to 
old age, and it is the bright gift to all who are 
open-eyed to it, and to all, anyway, at last, for " old 
age " is the possibility of all ; so, in time, these sug- 
gestions will be in order for all those who have been 
lucky enough to have been undrafted from their life 



62 SHADOWS. 

in the former, until (using a mercantile phrase) they 
have become clue. 

I have a friend, whose ancestors lived in this old 
Bay State ; but, in the long ago, his parents emigrated 
to the far west, and grew up with it in what is now 
the State of Iowa. While writing this chapter, I 
have received a letter from him. Its contents seem 
almost a contribution to, or corroboration of, what I 
have been saying. His communication embraced the 
celebration of the ninety-first anniversary of the birth- 
day of his mother, — in good health, for her years, 
and mind unclouded. 

I have always been pleased with the tender and 
rational tones of his poetic effusions on previous 
similar and other festive occasions which he has gen- 
erally sent to me, as he has this one. At this time 
were gathered children, grandchildren, and relatives 
and friends; and he among them gave and read a 
poetic tribute, which the old lady and all enjoyed for 
its beauty and fitness. He, like this writer, is getting 
to be somewhat venerable, but our souls are young, 
as, on my theory, all Spiritualists' souls ought to be ; 
and the fact of being believers in our hopeful philos- 
ophy takes these tributes out of mere poetry and sen- 
timent, and gives the luster of reality, that no one 
who does not only feel, but knows, that this life is 
but the vestibule of the one that follows, can realize 
these mortal sunsets so radient with blue, green, and 
gold, bespeaking a pleasant day on the " tomorrow 
of death," as a true Spiritualist can. 

Feeling now in this special case more than it may 






life's afterxoox. 63 

be prudent to say in a book, I will print his verses 
for the sake of their preservation, and as a reminder 
to this writer and others of much that is suggested 
but not expressed here. 

ANNIVERSARIUS.* 

"October, seventeen ninety-three, 
Shall ever to us children be 
A month and year of jubilee ; 
For then was born to life and light 
The being of our heart's delight, 
Who modestly through life's long light, 
Hath honor's shield kept clean and bright, — 
Our mother. 

Who in our country's early dawn 
Hath listened, rapt, to tales and song 
Of Washington and Jefferson, 
Amidst New England's Christian spires, 
Of lofty deeds through battle's fires 
That Freedom won for glorious sires, — 
Oar mother. 

Who in young womanhood's first grace 
Hath joined her brothers in the race 
Through forests dark new paths to trace; 
And plant new States on fields afar, 
W^here brightly shone that ' Western Star ■ 
W r hich hostile foes should ne'er debar, — 
Our mother. 

Full many a task is bravely done. 
Full many a trial nobly won, 
Through her ripe years of ninety-one. 
May peace and honor crown her days ; 
Let trust in God her courage raise, 
While all her children join to praise, — 
Our mother." 
* C. A. K. — Keokuk, October 28, 1884. 



64 SHADOWS. 

In the course of this chapter, which seems to have 
been inspired by what might be called the approach 
of evening, one may have noticed a thoughtfully- 
expressed verse from an " Old Man's Story." I do 
not know who was the author, but think I will use 
the rest of it, it expresses so well what I want to say, 
and better than I can say it in prose briefly. I do 
not think the author will object to my thus drafting 
it from my scrap-book, with the setting I have thus 
given to his words, which are as follows : — 

" To the past go more dead faces 

Every year, 
As the loved leave vacant places 

Every year. 
Everywhere the sad eyes meet us, 
In the evening dusk they greet us, 
And to come to them entreat us 

Every year. 

You are growing old, they tell us, 

Every year ; 
You are more alone, they tell us, 

Every year ; 
You can win no more affection, 
You have only recollection, 
Deeper sorrow and dejection, 

Every year. 

Yes, the shores of life are shifting 

Every year, 
And we are all seaward drifting 

Every year ; 
Old places changing, fret us, 
The living now forget us, 
There are fewer to regret us 

Every year. 



life's afternoon. 65 

But the truer life draws nigher 

Every year, 
And its morning star climbs higher 

Every year ; 
Earth's hold on us grows slighter, 
And the heavy burdens lighter, 
And the dawn of the immortal brighter, 

Every year." 



"All who appreciate the influence of high ideals, and an 
exalted faith in immortality on individual and national destiny, 
must admit that the transit of a pencil, proved beyond a doubt 
to be guided by unseen force and intelligence, is a phenomenon 
of infinitely more value and concern to the world today than 
the whole science of astronomy." — Epes Sargent. 



67 



VI. 

indepe:nt>ent slate-writing. 

An elaborate description of an experience under the 
most rigid conditions. 

One of the most interesting and satisfying phases 
of the spiritual phenomena is independent slate-writ- 
ing. It interested the late Epes Sargent more than any 
other phase, and so it does me ; but I include writ- 
ing or written messages made otherwise when I know 
them to be genuine, that is, from a super-mundane 
source. I think, however, there are many other 
phases of the phenomena equally interesting and 
important. There is something, nevertheless, that is 
very convincing in this slate-writing phase, and I 
have had much interesting experience in it. 

No one is more aware than I am of its liability to 
be fraudulent, but no amount of fraud lessens the 
value of a genuine manifestation. Liability of being 
cheated should lead us to be open-eyed so as to be 
sure of our facts. I am happy to say that I am sure; 
and if there are any " bottom facts " in anything, 
the facts that I offer under this head, as well as the 
facts offered in the other chapters of this book, can 
be depended upon as " bottom " ones. 



70 SHADOWS. 

It would require a book by itself to relate all my 
experiences in this line that are unmistakable, but 
that is not now the object. I will relate one experi- 
ence, and do it somewhat elaborately, some of the 
outcome of it being rather important, because it 
extended some beyond my personal experience after- 
wards, even into the public life of Rev. Joseph Cook, 
and local history. 

I was not particularly attracted to Charles E. Wat- 
kins, but that, of course, is a matter of taste. I some- 
times think Ralph Waldo Emerson must have had 
the mediumistic class in his mind when he said : 
" There is a crack in everything that God has made, 
but the light of heaven shines through the crevice." 
But this class, so prominent in modern Spiritualism, 
knows that I appreciate it, and that I do not make 
this remark as any reflection, only from my experi- 
ence. I am glad I am not a medium, and I dare say 
they are glad that they are not this writer. But 
what would we do without them ? 

I said I was not much attracted to Watkins, but 
from my experience with him under crucial test con- 
ditions, I think I had been prejudiced, so I say this 
to do him justice. Meeting him one day in the 
Banner of Light bookstore, he asked me, rather pat- 
ronizingly, why I had not been to see him or his 
manifestations, and said he would like to have me 
do so, if I was willing. I replied that I had not 
much leisure time for such things, except for my own 
benefit, and then I wanted to have everything my 
own way. "You can have everything your own 






INDEPENDENT SLATE-WRITING. 71 

way," said he, " if you will come.*' I said: "If you 
mean exactly that, Mr. Watkins, I will come and 

have a sitting with you.*' He replied that he did 
mean exactly that, and I fixed the next day in the 
afternoon, at three o'clock, as the time that I would 
call upon him. I hope the reader will notice very par- 
ticularly, and in detail, my method, and as I intend 
to be very exact, and the result being very import- 
ant, my statement will be worth listening to. 

The next day, on my way to his residence, I 
stopped at a hardware store on Washington Street, 
and bought two new slates. In size they were about 
twelve inches by eight, with the usual wooden 
frames. As the storekeeper had no double slates, I 
got him to bore a hole through them both on their 
sides, through which I run a strong twine, and tied 
them together, making them practically a double 
slate, putting between them a small bit of slate pen- 
cil before tying them thus together. I then, in that 
form, knowing they were new and clean, put them 
into my bag, which, as usual, 1 was carrying, and 
continued my way to Mr. Watkins's residence. I 
found him at home and alone in his parlor. 

It was one of the long, warm days of summer, tbe^ 
curtains were up, and the bright afternoon sun was 
shining into the room, so it was very light, and one 
could read easity in any part of it. There were sofa 
and chairs in the room, and in the center was a plain, 
wooden table, rectangular in shape, about four feet 
long and two wide. On the table, on one side, were 
two slates. 



72 SHADOWS. 

I kept my satchel in my hands, and took my seat 
at the table as he suggested, Mr. Watkins taking his 
seat at the table, and was my vis-a-vis. Being seated, 
he said : "Wetherbee, now take the slates there " 
[pointing to those on the table] "to the sink, and 
see that they are perfectly clean. I don't want to 
touch them," said he, " for the better test ; the mani- 
festation will be to you, if we get any." " That is 
very fair," said I, "but I have brought my own 
slates" [taking them out of my bag], "and I guess 
I will use them." "That is right," said he; "I am 
glad you did so." 

The slates I took out of the bag just as they were 
tied together in the store ; they had never been out 
of my hands from the time I had tied them and put 
them in the bag ; then laid them before me flat on 
the table, and laid my two hands flat on them just as 
they laid tied together, one then, of course, on the 
top of the other. The medium, who was sitting, as 
I have said, opposite to me, in a short time placed 
his two hands on the top of mine, — mine being 
unmoved and flat on the slates as I had first put them, 
and the tied slates one on top of the other flat on the 
table under my two hands. I hardly think his hands 
touched the slates ; possibly his fingers did slightly ; 
it would make no difference if they had, for the 
slates nor my hands were not moved from where I 
first put them. 

Nothing occurred for a few minutes, wiien he said 
it will probably take longer for the spirits with new 
unmagnetized slates than it would if I had used his. 



IlsTDEPENDENT SLATE- WHITING. 73 

I told him I was in no hurry ; that there would be a 
great satisfaction to rne if the spirits would write on 
these new ones of mine, not but what it would be all 
right for them to use his, but if I afterwards should 
have occasion to speak of it, it would not carry the 
same conviction as it would if done on these new 
ones, and which had never been apart since I tied 
them together in the store. I must confess I had 
taken such a rigid course to prevent any fraud or 
imposition that I hardly expected any writing would 
be produced. I only hoped without much faith. 

In a little while, to my great surprise, I heard a 
faint but perceptible scratching of, probably, the bit 
of pencil between the two slates under my hands. 
The medium's hands were still on mine, and neither 
his hands nor mine had been moved in the least, and 
my eyes had not once been off of them. If nothing 
had been written, it would have been an external 
sensuous or objective phenomenon, for we both had 
had auricular evidence that there was some sort of 
movement without material contact or connection 
with the operation. 

Soon the scratching ended with three prett}^ dis- 
tinct taps, seemingly by the pencil inside, and the 
medium said: " That means they are done." Remov- 
ing his hands from the top of mine, I then lifted the 
slates, untied one of the strings, and opened them 
before me like a double slate, and found on one of 
the inside faces, in a plain, easy, oblique, running- 
hand, a message from a well-known departed friend. 

It was the name of my father-in-law. The face of 



74 SHADOWS. 

the other slate was untouched and clean. The fol- 
lowing is the message that was written by, what it 
would seem, invisible hands: — . 

Summer Land 
" My dear son 

I do thank God that I can give you this test of spirit 
power over matter. I trust you will ever strive and search 
after truth as you are now I am truly your father in law 

William Beak." 

Perhaps it would have been better to have left the 
name in blank, but I am aiming to be exact, and so 
will be thus outspoken. 

I remarked when I read this message, purporting 
to come from my venerable friend, that it was quite 
remarkable and very satisfactory, for it was written 
without mortal contact or mechanical action, — that 
is, the bit of -pencil was used, it would seem, by an 
invisible intelligence, hence must have been done by 
a spirit, for no human being in the form did it. The 
reader can see that, if I have stated the matter 
clearly. 

"Do you know the person ?" said the medium, 
after I had read it. "Oh, yes, perfectly well," said 
I, "but it does not sound like him, nor is it his hand- 
writing. He wrote rather a bold, perpendicular hand, 
— but that is of no consequence. The fact is just 
the same, for it is the act of an invisible intelligence, 
and no matter who wrote it, I am sure you did not, 
and no other human being, for we are alone, and if a 
spirit wrote it, whether it was my friend or some 



INDEPENDENT SLATE-WRITING. 75 

alias using his name, it settles the question of a 
future life." 

I do not think the medium knew my connection 
with the name of that spirit, or any of my social sur- 
roundings, and if he had it would not, under such 
rigid circumstances, have made any difference. He 
said, in reply to my remark or criticism: "Let us 
try again." 

I closed the slates, and put my hands flat on them 
as before, and he put his hands on mine. The 
scratching noise began this time at once, and stopped 
as before, with three signifying taps, as if with the 
pencil. On opening them, the other face on which 
nothing had been written the first time, was the fol- 
lowing message. I have them both now, and the 
slates : — 

" My Dear Son. I am going to try & write more like 
the way I used to, but 1 may not. Still I want to say tell 
your wife I still live 

William Beals " 

It will be noticed that the invisible actor in this 
matter heard my remark about his hand-writing, for 
he, she, or it acted on the hint. I do not feel as 
if this was a message from Mr. Beals. There were 
more important things to have said if it were he. 
Still it may have been ; but I am sure as I am of 
anything — in fact, I positively know — that it was 
not the act of anyone in the form. The proof of 
identity in the manifestations generally is a far more 
difficult thing than is the proof of its being a spirit.' 



76 SHADOWS. 

I will add, in this connection, that at the bottom 
of the slate that had the second message written on 
it was the following message, which was not noticed 
at first, as it was written very fine, but still very dis- 
tinctly. It purports to be from my little daughter : — 

" Dear father I will now write when you are not expect- 
ing me 

Your own Hattie " 

Not wishing to lose these slates with this experi- 
ence of perfectly independent slate-writing on them, 
I tied them up again and put them back into my bag 
for safe-keeping, and then gave my attention to further 
manifestations, using the medium's slates, as pro- 
posed at first. I will mention but one experiment, 
which was as follows : — 

I took the two slates that were on the table and 
washed them, , though they were clean before, and 
was going to pass them to him, and was about doing 
so, holding them both together in my right hand. 
"No," said he, "I do not want to touch them. Sit 
down, as before, and hold them together at arm's 
length as far from me as you can." I did so with my 
right hand, he sitting vis-a-vis, holding my left hand 
with both of his. 

There was, as before, a bit of pencil between the 
two slates, and, as I held them, they must have been 
four or five feet from the medium. The writing was 
at once heard, and there was quite a pressure on the 
extended slates, so that it was some exertion to hold 
them out. When the writing had stopped, I laid them 



INDEPENDENT SLATE-WRITING. 77 

open before me, the medium, of course, never having 
touched them, and there was a letter on each from 
two of my well-remembered departed friends. 

They were written, it would seem, simultaneously, 
or in the one operation, in entirely different hands 
and subjects. One, of course, must have been writ- 
ten bottom upwards, — or rather, I should say, the 
whole operation seems to be a psychical one, or by 
will-power, rather than by a mechanical one. Here 
are the two messages, which I copied at the time : — 

" How glad I am to come " My son It is very pleas- 

to you Weatherbee and tell ant to prove to you in this 

you in this way that I am as way that we can communicate 

alive as ever I was and am with our friends 

often with you and am trying W? 1 Beals " 
to be of service to you 

Ralph Huntington " 

There lacks in these messages the internal evidence 
of their coming from the parties who have signed 
them. For instance: my old and intimate friend 
Ralph Huntington, who also knew my father before 
me, would never have spelled my name "Weather- 
bee." Still, we would not criticise, for we do not 
know the difficulties or disabilities in connection 
with these occult operations. 

On reaching my home after this very satisfactory 
seance, I saw my friend and neighbor Epes Sargent 
coming down my street, and I waited at the garden 
gate for him, and we went into the house together, 
I having something important to tell him. I showed 



78 SHADOWS. 

him the slates that were in m}' bag, and gave him an 
account of all the circumstances* He was much 
pleased, and was very much interested in my account 
of the experience. 

He went in a day or two after that, and had a 
sitting himself, which, in the end, led to an important 
circumstance, to be mentioned in another chapter. 

Mr. Sargent was entirely unknown to Mr. Wat- 
kins. When he called to have a seance, he was not 
very hospitably received, or, as he would have been, 
had he announced his name. It was better, how- 
ever, as it was. Mr. Watkins, it seemed, was not in 
a good frame of mind, and when this stranger, as it 
seemed, called to have or see some of his manifesta- 
tions, the medium was disinclined ; said he did not 
feel very well ; did not think he could do anything, 
and he had better call some other time. 

Mr. Sargent said he lived some ways off, and would 
like very much to have him sit then, as he did not 
know when he could come again. "Well," says Mr. 
Watkins, inviting him up stairs, "we will try and see 
what we can do, but I guess you will be disappointed." 
Mr. Sargent did not bring any slates, so he sat at the 
table as I did, and after washing the slates, as he was 
told to, which then lay on the table, he laid one of 
them before him, with his two hands upon it. After 
a little while the bit of pencil which had been placed 
under it began its perceptible scratching, when sud- 
denly the medium jumped up and said : "Why, you 
are Epes Sargent ; " and the slate was then turned 
over, at the same time showing a message addressed 



INDEPENDENT SLATE- WRITING. 79 

to Epes Sargent, with his father's name at the end 
of it. 

Now, notice this : it seems that this mysterious 
work is somehow connected with the mind of the 
medium, for he had become cognizant that his vis-a- 
vis was Epes Sargent by knowing what the spirit had 
written on the slate before it had been turned over 
for the message to be read. 

It would seem by this act that the message came 
into the medium's mind as it was being written on 
the slate, and before it was turned over to be visible. 

This does not alter the super-mundane fact, for it 
was not in the medium's mind, for he did not know 
the person before him was Epes Sargent until some 
exoteric influence had impressed it on his brain, and 
that seems to have been just when it was being 
executed on the slate. This was a very interesting 
point with Mr. Sargent, and more than compensated 
him for the preliminary inhospitality or brusqueness. 

Epes Sargent was one of our distinguished, schol- 
arly Spiritualists. Watkins naturally knew him by 
reputation, but did not know him personally, having 
never before met him. Not knowing who his visitor 
was when he called will account for his indifference, 
or his state of mind, which so suddenly turned into 
deference and obsequious civility as soon as he was 
cognizant from the spirit's message in whose pres- 
ence he was. 

Sargent and I have many times spoken of this cir- 
cumstance, and as being evidence not only of a royal 
road for information, but of two distinct personali- 



80 



SHADOWS. 



ties, — the personality of the spirit who saw and knew 
Mr. Sargent, and the personality of Charles E. Wat- 
kins, who did not know Mr. Sargent until his invisi- 
ble assistant had told him who he was by writing his 
name. True, Watkins knew it intuitively in advance 
of seeing it, but manifestly not until it had been 
written by an invisible intelligence. 






" Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently about the planet 
Venus, predicted confidently concerning it before the telescope 
was invented, that if man ever came to see it more clearly they 
would discover that it had phases like our moon ; and within a 
century after his death the telescope was invented, and that pre- 
diction verified. I am not without hope that we may even here 
and now obtain some accurate information concerning that 
* Other World,' which the instinct of mankind has so long pre- 
dicted. 

Indeed, all that we call science, as well as all we call poetry, 
is a particle of such information, accurate, as far as it goes, 
though it be but on the confines of the truth. If we can reason 
so accurately and with such wonderful confirmation of our rea- 
soning respecting so-called material objects infinitely removed 
beyond the range of our natural vision, why may not our specu- 
lations penetrate as well into the immaterial, starry system of 
which the former is but the outward and visible type? Surely, 
we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the 
spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as those outward 
are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Zoroaster, Soc- 
rates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenburg, — these are some of our 
astronomers." — Henry D. Thoreau. 

81 



VII. 

PHENOMENA WITH COLCHESTER. 

Thoughts on sensuous phenomena, and illustrations 
from experience. 

The interest felt in the spiritual manifestations is 
in the fact of their being the work of the spirits 
of departed human beings. The manifestations in 
themselves are generally only trifles hardly worthy 
of attention. My only purpose in writing about 
them now is wholly owing to what I believe to be 
their intelligent super-mundane source. There is, 
however, a difference in them. Some would be 
interesting simply as physical phenomena, and in 
this respect those, through the mediumship of Mr. 
Colchester, were very unique and interesting, and in 
them I took a great interest and the psychical or 
will-power in their production, instead of mechanical 
power on the part of the spirits, or of the medium, 
if one chooses so to consider it, was a source of light, 
or, rather, suggested the rationale or explanation of 
many other phases of a more mechanically-performed 
appearance in their production. 

Colchester died a decade or more ago, but many 

83 



84 SHADOWS. 

of the old Spiritualists will remember him well. The 
thought of him comes up in connection with Epes 
Sargent, whose name appears so frequently in the 
last chapter. We went together very often to witness 
these manifestations, and they interested him very 
much, more than any other phase, unless it was that 
of independent slate-writing. I might add that that 
distinguished litterateur and scholar was always more 
interested in the sensuous class of manifestations 
than in the sometimes-called higher phases of the 
mental, ethical, or trance descriptions. One can see 
this preference by reading his publications, — " The 
Planchette," or " The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism." 
1 am also similarly inclined, with Mr. Sargent, for 
a preference for the sensuous, but am as much inter- 
ested in the intellectual also, because I am in those 
of a sensuous or phenomenal character. If the phe- 
nomenal or the sensuous were eliminated, the other, 
and may be higher, phases in the minds of many 
would not stand as spiritual manifestations if unsup- 
ported by the former. The fact that raps are made, 
and movements of material objects without material 
contact, and other descriptions of physical phenom- 
ena so clearly manifest by an intelligent invisible 
power, or what I have called sensuous proof, it 
throws a luster of truth, or, at least, a luster of rea- 
sonableness on the other, of which the observation, 
unaided by the sensuous phases, would not detect 
any super-mundane source for the other, or trance or 
inspirational utterances. They would, unaided by 
the sensuous, all be considered normal qualities, — 



PHENOMENA WITH COLCHESTER. 85 

hardly explainable, to be sure, as founded on educa- 
tion, but nothing more than is noticeable all over the 
world in the realm of thought and oratory. 

With a knowledge of the fact that comes so dis- 
tinctly in the sensuous phases of this impulse, force, 
or power, it explains very rationally some extraordin- 
ary gifts in quite uneducated people, indicating a 
royal road of information and knowledge, besides 
being independent of a scholastic one, and goes still 
farther than that, extending the principle over the 
mentality of mankind, whether Spiritualists or not. 

All thoughtful people on this subject, and favoring 
it, consider it of a natural and not a supernatural 
character; therefore, there is a law for it, and, if 
there is, "this divinity that shapes our ends,' 5 of 
which Shakespeare fancifully spoke, and which 
modern Spiritualism teaches under a more modest 
name, this supervision or influence, whether we be- 
lieve it or not, reaches all human beings, and many 
an oration that is a masterpiece of intellectual and 
eloquent effort may date more or less from a higher 
source than the utterer of it, teaching us that there 
are Davids, Ezekiels, Isaiahs, and St. Pauls todaj- in 
the various walks of life as there w T ere in the days of 
old. 

It is possible that the Lulu Hursts, or other mag- 
netically-strong people today, may teach us without 
drawing on the supernatural how Sampson was able 
to do what he did in his day, if he did, as recorded. 
It seems to me, also, the poets, from Homer down to 
Holmes, as Thoreau has said : * % Keeping in advance 



86 SHADOWS. 

of the glare of philosophy, always dwelling in an 
auroral atmosphere, writing glowing and ruddy fables 
that precede the noonday thoughts of men as aurora 
does the sun's rays." Certainly, if one wants to find 
profound truths in harmony with modern Spiritual- 
ism, and not intending any such harmony only as a 
pleasing fancy, he will find them in abundance in the 
writings of the poets. 

Under the thought which I have expressed, I am 
inclined to think when the poets, in this auroral state 
of mind, write, as the bard of Avon did, when he 
said : — 

" As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name," 

they will find that they had not been building 
castles in the' air, but will find often that they are 
proving what that great scholar Henry Thomas 
Buckle said: "That the imagination of the poet in 
one age forecasts the discoveries of science in the 
next;" and then cited many pages of instances to 
prove it, just as modern Spiritualism has been mak- 
ing literal truth many of the poetical beauties of 
Longfellow, and of many other well-remembered 
poets. 

I began this chapter with the intention of relating 
some of Colchester's manifestations, and I think I 
will not change my mind, but let what I have said 
answer for an introduction, or a setting to them. 
His manifestations were various in kind. He had 



PHENOMENA WITH COLCHESTER. 87 

the red letters of initials and names of departed 
friends come on his arms; he gave tests also with 
pellets, and many other forms of the phenomena. 

The phase most interesting to Epes Sargent, as 
well as to me, was the artistic execution of pictures 
on cards with colored pencils or crayons, without any 
manipulation or mechanical action, the execution 
being by will-power, and, it is reasonable to say, by 
the spirits. I will describe an instance by way of 
illustration : — 

We were seated around a table at the pleasant 
home of Daniel Farrar, of Hancock Street, Boston. 
The table was about four feet by two, square. There 
were six persons making this circle, consisting of 
Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, Mrs. Wetherbee, Epes Sargent, 
myself, and Colchester, — two on each of the long 
sides, and one each on the ends. I had an end seat, 
and the back of my chair was against the bureau that 
was on the side of the room, and Sargent was my 
vis-a-vis. We were having a very satisfactory time, 
with a variety of manifestations, and the circle was 
a remarkably good one. 

Colchester said to me : " Take a few of those plain, 
white cards " (they were on the table for the pur- 
pose) " and put them in one of the drawers back of 
you, marking them first so as to know them again." 
I did so, cutting a crooked piece out of the corner of 
each, and retaining them for the purpose. There 
were six in number of the cards that I took and put 
in the drawer. " Now, take a handful of those cray- 
ons," said he, "and throw them in, and shut the 



88 SHADOWS. 

drawer." It may be well to say that the drawer was 
quite full of white, folded cotton materials, leaving 
no spare room, so that the cards and pencils were in 
tolerably close quarters. 

We proceeded then with the manifestations as 
before, and in perhaps about half an hour, in which 
we had other manifestations, Mr. Colchester said to 
me: "Better now open the drawer, and see how the 
cards look." I got up, and had to, as before, in order 
to move my chair so as to open the drawer, and took 
out what w T ere once the six clean, white cards, and 
found a picture, artistically drawn, on each of them, 
— flowers, fruit, landscapes, birds, etc., — and the 
colors used in the pictures thus drawn were the 
colors of the crayons or pencils that were put in 
the bureau drawer. Those crayons that we left on 
the table were not expressed in the pictures. I 
hardly need to say that this was done in a brightly- 
lighted room, and nobody had any access to the 
drawer, and could not if they had desired to, as I 
was sitting so closely to it, and had to move my chair 
before I could open it. 

It would take much time to write out in detail all 
my experiences with this medium. I will add one 
other experience, — one of many, — it was certainly 
very remarkable. 

One day when Epes Sargent and I were going to 
attend one of his seances, at the same gentleman's 
house, he said to me: "Suppose you stop at some 
store on your way there, and buy some white paste- 
board, — the cards used are all right enough, but, 



PHENOMENA WITH COLCECESTER. 89 

with our own, it will make the statement stronger, if 
we should ever want to make one," — and I did so; 
and, before the seance began, cut this purchased 
pasteboard into pieces about six inches square, so 
had about a dozen of them, which I laid in a pile on 
the table that we were going to use. 

This time — and usually the seance was in Mr. 
Farrar's parlor — we used there an extension-table, 
and, on this occasion, about a dozen of us were seated 
around it, Mr. Colchester sitting next to me. After 
having much writing on papers or pellets, and many 
pictures drawn in this inscrutable way, Mr. Col- 
chester said to me: "Take one of your pieces of 
card, Mr. Wetherbee, and mark it so that you will 
know it again, and pass it to me." I did so, cutting 
off a crooked piece on the corner, and putting it in 
my pocket, and passed the mutilated card, clean and 
white, to him. He took it with his thumb and finger 
and shied it over into the opposite corner of the 
room, grabbed up a handful of the crayons that were 
on the table, and threw them over altogether into 
the corner where the card had been shied, saying, at 
the same time: u Go and pick the card up;" and I 
did so, and found an artistically-drawn picture on it. 

In the execution of this picture, all the colors that 
the crayons were composed of were used, and which 
lay. as thej had fallen, helter-skelter about that cor- 
ner of the room. The piece of it that I had kept in 
my pocket as a detector fitted the mutilation exactly, 
and the fact of its being the same identical piece of 
cardboard was unmistakable. This was not a solitary 



90 SHADOWS. 

experiment; there were many of them, and often, but 
one instance is enough to relate. You will readily 
see that this was not, and could not, have been a 
mechanical experiment. 

On one of these occasions, during the experiment 
of writing the names of departed spirits on pellets, 
this circumstance occurred. It also was not a soli- 
tary instance ; but one is enough to mention. Col- 
chester said to Mr. Farrar : " Now write a few names 
on some slips of paper, and fix one of them in your 
mind, without showing them to me, and go and throw 
them out of the window;" and Mr. Farrar did so. 
"Now," said he, "think of that name, and tell me 
where you would like to find it." Remember, the 
pellets were thrown out of the window, and were 
somewhere out on Hancock Street, blowing wherever 
the wind chose to waft them. 

Being thus asked where he would like to find the 
pellet with the special name on it, Mr. Farrar said : 
"In the first vase on the mantel-shelf" (there were 
three vases there). He went to the vase and found 
a pellet there. " Do not open it," said Colchester ; 
but he took a piece of paper and wrote a name, and 
when the pellet was opened by Mr. Farrar it was the 
same as written by Colchester, and was the name 
Mr. Farrar had in his mind, and seemed to be one of 
those that had been thrown out of the window ; at 
any rate, it was one written by Mr. Farrar, and he 
wrote no others but the batch he threw, by request, 
out of the window. Epes Sargent, Hon. Charles E. 



PHENOMENA WITH COLCHESTER. 91 

Jenkins, as well as myself and others, all had the 
same opportunities, with the same success. 

At some of these seances of Mr. Colchester's, at 
the house of Mr. Farrar, there was present an inter- 
esting French lady, of middle age. She was a stranger 
to all but the Farrars, and had not been long in this 
country. This lady had lost a daughter a few weeks 
before she left Paris. She was a very spiritual-look- 
ing and talking lady, and became very much inter- 
ested in Spiritualism, and what she received at these 
seances, and the way she expressed herself, made 
everything she got as interesting to us or the others 
as if personal to themselves. 

There had been a great many pictures made on this 
occasion. White cards were placed in a pile on the 
floor, and a number of crayons on them, about four 
feet from the medium. Each card in the pile was 
marked severally by each one of the circle, and the 
pile and the crayons were covered over with a table- 
cloth to insure darkness, and there was a picture 
found at short intervals on each, so that each person 
got one. — all executed without human manipulation 
or mechanical power. 

This French lady was then told to take one of the 
plain, white pieces of cardboard, and hold it under 
the table. The hands of all present, including the 
medium's, were in plain sight on the table. In a few 
minutes the French lady was requested to lay the 
card she was holding under the table on the table 
for inspection. There was found upon it a picture 
and a communication. I will try and describe it. 



92 SHADOWS. 

Near the center was a circle drawn on it, around the 
outside of which was a wreath of flowers. Inside of 
this circle was written a very affectionate message 
to the lady, signed with the name of her departed 
daughter who had died, as has been mentioned, a few 
weeks before she left Paris. The writing was so 
neat and small it could with difficulty be read except 
with a magnifying-glass. 

No one knew anything about the circumstances of 
this lady except the Farrars, and they only the circum- 
stances named, and that she was an entire stranger 
to the medium. This, then, all things considered, 
was one of the most perfect tests of intelligent spirit 
power and spirit presence, and even of identification, 
that one could possibly have. 

When relating this incident once in a newspaper 
article, I closed it with the quotation of a line or two 
of poetry ; and now, wanting to put a finish to this 
long chapter, I will do so with the same lines, which 
are as follows : — 

"It may be 

The thoughts that visit us — we know not whence — 
Sudden as inspiration, are the whispers 
Of disembodied spirits, speaking to us 
As friends, who wait outside a prison wall, 
Through tlie barred windows speak to those within. ,, 



" I am ready to admit that the heart cries out for love just as 
loudly as the brain calls for law ; and, further, I am ready to admit 
that to gain order for the head at the price of the loss of hap- 
piness and trust for the heart is a most questionable advantage, 
or even a positive loss ; for the heart and its needs are as real 
and as true and high a part of human life as is the knowledge 
and thought of the brain. I even believe that happiness and 
peace are so necessary a part of life that any life is a failure that 
in the long run does not gain them." — Bev. M, J Savage. 



VIII. 

PHANTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 

Being an article illustrative of the subject in general. 

There are some things said in the following article 
which I wrote for and was printed in the Boston 
Commonwealth, that are worth mentioning in this 
book, and will help incidentally to throw a luster on 
some of its preceding and succeeding pages. I am 
aware that part of it is superfluous in this connection, 
but I think I had better present it without any muti- 
lation. The reader can skip whatever seems to him 
irrelevant : — 

There it stands in the opposite corner of the room, 
looking at me ; and yet how can a table without eyes 
look at one? But I have reason to think that it 
once did see me ; yes, and many times, or apparently 
did, and perhaps it does now. But this needs an 
explanation, and would perhaps be more properly 
expressed if I said an invisible presence, acting 
through it, made this piece of furniture seem to see 
me, or act as if it did. 

I am speaking of a small, old-fashioned table, or 
ligfttstand, which was made in 1751, That was the 

95 



96 SHADOWS. 

year that Gray gave to the world his immortal 
" Elegy." I did not know that fact once in this con- 
nection, but this old table once told me so itself, and 
the encyclopaedia indorsed the statement. What a 
story this old table could tell — now one hundred and 
thirty-three years old — if it were only sentient and 
vocal! 

Why should I say u if," after making the above 
historic statement as voiced by the table ? If Robert 
Southey could address a mummy whose cerements 
had not been disturbed for three thousand years, and 
make it poetically vocal, so may I address this table 
and make it vocal. I think I have the advantage of 
the poet as to the facts in the case, but that is a mat- 
ter which will be brought out as I proceed. 

Even now, as I am looking at the old table, and 
the large, old Bible resting on it, of the same age, — 
for the title-page of that shows it was printed in 
MDCCLL, — how in fancy the old familiar ances- 
tral faces are associated with them, — table and 
book ; these, by some afinity, have always stuck by 
each other. In their connection, in my mind's eye, 
how plainly I see the venerable face of my grand- 
mother, who used to explain the quaint old pictures 
to my youthful mind, and her sister also (my mother's 
aunt) often in the same instructive occupation, and 
(using a line from Robert Burns) like 

" The father, mixing a' wi' admonition due." 

This latter relative of mine, when she ascended, was 
ninety-three years old, and she was born also in 1751. 






PHAXTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 97 

What a year 1751 must have been to the tribe of 
" Shadows " ! This old table came into form, the 
old Bible resting on it was printed, that same year ; 
and in 1751 that old relative, Aunt Fales, was born ; 
and, as I have said, Gray's " Elegy" was published. 
Am I straining a point in associating this poem with 
what is only personal property? Well, let us see. 

That piece of immortal literature has nothing to do 
with this old table, or with the Bible on it, or with 
my venerable relative; and j^et an incident of an 
Endoric character in its connection makes the poem 
a feature in this quadrangular picture. Irrespective 
of the incident referred to, I find an association 
between it and my thought in one of its verses. Let 
me quote it : — 

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 
His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by." 

Am I not, even if not prone, poring on the table 
that "babbles by"? I am quite literal, as well as 
phantomatic, when I say "babble." But I may as 
well relate the Endoric incident which gives me more 
than a poetic connection with Gray's "Elegy," and 
explain at the same time the significance of " babble," 
and perhaps add a solemn luster to the matter on 
which I am writing. 

A woman was once living with me in the capacity 
of nurse. Accidentally, both to her and myself, I 
found that she possessed that constitutional quality 
that some people have, that in their presence, and 



98 SHADOWS. 

sometimes without contact, as was the case with this 
young woman, inanimate tables and other objects 
become animate, and intelligently move, it would 
seem, by the said objects' own volition, or give off 
audible sounds, or raps, as they are called, that are 
intelligent, and as translatable as a ticker in a tele- 
graph office. This old table was particularly apt to 
be thus talkative, when near enough to this woman 
to be within the sphere of her magnetism. 

This person lived with us about two years, and I 
thus had two years of very valuable experience. She 
was not aware she had this power until I discovered 
it, and she knew nothing at first of my dead and 
buried relatives ; but noticing this phenomenon, and 
investigating it with this old table, to her surprise 
and mine the translation of the sounds and move- 
ments by the alphabet proved to be communications 
from individuals who had died. 

This was no surprise to me, because I had had 
experience before, but I was a little surprised to find 
one of the invisibles giving the name of " Hannah," 
particularly when in reply to u Hannah who?" the 
response came "Fales," — for that was Aunt Fales, 
the old relative who was born in 1751. The moment 
I recognized her the table was violently active, as if 
to express pleasant emotion at the recognition. I 
was sure, under the circumstances, that I was in the 
presence of my departed relative, whose body had 
long before been laid away in the grave. 

This was no solitary instance. The manifestations 
during those two years were multitudinous, and of 



PHAXTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 99 

every variety. I do not propose now to make any 
record of them in detail, but will mention one 
instance in connection with this relative, because her 
birth-year and this table's and Bible's birth-year were 
the same. I have other reasons, also, which will 
explain themselves as I proceed. 

It was at one of these Endoric interviews (I use the 
word " Endoric,'' because during my life a picture in 
that old book of the woman of Endor raising Samuel 
was one that had often attracted her attention, and 
of course mine), as if to prove an intelligence that 
was distinct from and superior to the young woman's 
through w T hose influence this old table was thus 
vocal, and possibly to make the point certain that the 
information did not come from me by mind-reading, 
that the table-raps claiming to be from Aunt Fales 
said this table and Bible and Gray's "Elegy" were 
of the same age. As I have said, investigation 
showed me that the poem was published -in 1751. 
So this old table, or the invisible intelligence using 
it as a mouthpiece, was a well-read institution, and 
also had told the truth. 

A little argument will seem to be in order here : 
That poem then, as now, was very popular, and all 
intelligent people, a hundred years ago, were famil- 
iar with it ; the world was not then as full as it is 
now of good productions, hence the minds of the 
thoughtful were not as crowded as they are now ; 
and so in this case the poem, being probably as 
familiar to her as the Lord's Prayer, came readily to 
the surface, when such a circumstance today might be 



100 SHADOWS. 

called pedantry. Everyone will remember that Gen- 
eral Wolfe, the hero of the successful battle on 
the Heights of Abraham, declared admiringly that 
he would rather be the author of that poem than the 
winner of battles. 

Speaking now of the communication, and the coin- 
cidence of the date, which I knew nothing about in 
any definite manner, it was a felicity in thought that 
I appreciate, and I have no doubt the spirit of Aunt 
Fales did, too ; and if that woman (I mean the nurse) 
were now alive, and present at this moment, I have 
no doubt this old table would signify its knowledge 
of what I am writing about by a visible manifesta- 
tion sufficient to joggle the old book that now rests 
on it. But, old table, though you are now still, I 
feel that the presence is there ; and so I will say, as 
the poet said when lately speaking of Burns : — 

." A presence haunts this room tonight, 
A force of mingled mist and light, 

From that far coast. 
Welcome beneath this roof of mine ! 
Welcome ! this vacant chair is thine, 
Dear friend and ghost ! " 

I am writing very truthfully, and not drawing at 
all on my imagination. This being admitted, is not 
this incident pretty good evidence that this venerable 
lady of 1751 was still alive and at this table at that 
time, and possibly now ? Certainly some one was, 
for a table cannot speak unaided ; and if anyone was, 
it may as likely have been she as another. Does it 
not almost make the tender fancy of Longfellow, 



PHANTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 101 

when he speaks of the departed, as something more 
than poetry, — something actual ? This, for instance, 
may be wiser than he knew : — 

" There are more guests at table than the hosts 
Invited. This illumined hall 
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts 
As silent as the pictures on the wall." 

Though alone now in my library, I do not feel that 
I am alone. Looking at that table and its associa- 
tions, I almost feel, aided perhaps by my imagina- 
tion, "a sense of something moving to and fro." 
One of my ancestors was a seeress, — could at times 
see the forms of the departed, and knew them, and 
sometimes knew their wishes and intentions. As 
this ancestor was, during her earthly life, the owner 
of both table and Bible, she may, in a sentimental 
sense, still hold the fee of them. 

To be understood, let me quote again a verse from 
the same poet, which expresses the idea better and 
briefer than I otherwise can : — 

" We have no title-deeds to house or lands ; 
Owners and occupants of earlier dates 
From graves forgotten stretch their dusky hands, 
And hold in mortmain still their old estates." 

She may have lent to these venerable articles a 
charm that lingers, and, in a sentimental way, influ- 
ences her descendant, inspiring his thought, as the 
subject certainly does ; but memories of those ancients 
out of the form, these old mementoes still in the 
form, crowd upon me thick and fast, and for fear of 



102 SHADOWS. 

being too lengthy for a newspaper article, I think I 
had better turn off the gas, so to speak, or rather the 
flow of ink; so, with the relation of an interesting 
circumstance which old Aunt Fales has often told 
me, I will close this article. 

This, to be sure, will not be an item of " phanto- 
matic table-talk," as I relate it from memory, but it 
always interested me, and may be interesting to oth- 
ers, as it is a fact in early Boston history; and the old 
table, though at this moment voiceless, seems to 
invite me to do what it could of itself if the old con- 
ditions were now attainable. 

Abiel Smith, who was Aunt Fales's brother, lived 
on State Street, at the corner of Pudding Lane, now 
Devonshire Street. This was before the war of the 
Revolution. His store, where he and his wife had 
done a thrifty business for some years, was on the 
ground floor; over it, and in the rear, the family 
lived. He had no children, so his family were his 
wife and the shop-tenders, — who were generally his 
relatives, — male and female, from the country. Times 
had become warlike and troublesome, — the English 
soldiers were encamped on the Neck, and ingress and 
egress to and from the town were difficult, and, under 
the circumstances, rather dangerous. 

Aunt Fales, then a young woman, was living with 
them at this period. Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Smith, 
began to feel uneasj^ about their property, and wanted 
to get out of the city with it ; but Abiel saw that 
that was impossible. She proposed a division, and 
she would try to take care of her half. They 



PHANTOMATIC TABLE-TALK. 103 

made a fair division, — on the one side, the debts 
and the stock, and, perhaps, the house ; and on 
the other, the gold. Mrs. Smith took the gold, 
which was about $20,000, for her part, leaving her 
husband the more valuable half, but, of course, the 
more risky half. Mrs. Smith and Aunt Fales then 
made some petticoats and quilted a guinea in every 
square, and when the two women were dressed for 
their journey they had $20,000 in gold in their skirts. 
In that way they rode through the British lines. 

In their agitation, Mrs. Smith could not find the 
key of their trunk, and the inspecting soldier broke it 
open with his bayonet, and, finding nothing contra- 
band, let them pass through the lines. Aunt Fales 
said she never was so frightened in all her life ; but 
they got safely out into the country, gold and all. 
When the British evacuated, as they did a few months 
after, Mrs. Smith returned with her gold. It was a 
matter of some surprise among the merchants of 
those days where " old Smith " got so much money, 
for he became a larger buyer of goods, and always 
had the " ready " to pay for his purchases. 

This was the beginning of one of the large fortunes 
of those times, and Abiel Smith, who survived his 
wife a year or two, died early in this century, and, 
having no children, his large fortune, for those days, 
was divided among his relatives, chiefly the sons and 
daughters of his eleven brothers and sisters. 



IX. 



EPES SABGENT. 

Some description of him, and experiences he and the 
writer have had together. — Joseph Cook. 

" My sprightly neighbor, gone before, 
To that unknown and silent shore, 
Shall we not meet as heretofore, 
Some summer morning? " 

I commence with this quotation a chapter on my 
friend and neighbor, Epes Sargent, not because it in 
any sense applies to him, but because he has often 
quoted it as applicable to me, strained possibly, and 
also as an illustration in his many conferences with 
me. Although it is some of the "jubilant spray" 
from Charles Lamb's flow of cheerful thought, I 
always think of it in connection with our late schol- 
arly brother, Epes Sargent. 

How many times and how pleasantly has the calm 
face of this friend and neighbor shone in upon me 
while seated in my library room reading or writing, 
as I am now. He could see me very plainly as he 
came down the street past my library window, and 
then, walking in, would spend a few minutes, and 

104 



EPES SARGENT. 105 

sometimes an hour or two, in pleasant conversation 
on the subject of the spirits, in which we were both 
so interested. 

I do not say this for the sake of telling of our 
intellectual intimacy, and the open and free manner 
he communicated with me, sometimes reading a 
manuscript of some book, or part of one, that he was 
preparing for the press. Two or three of his later 
works I knew something of in the composition of 
them by this familiar ante-natal inspection. 

I am now writing a chapter under his name as the 
subject, and who knows but by his invisible direc- 
tion ? I am sure it is by his influence. I can say 
that much without encroaching upon the domain of 
the super-mundane. I feel that anything I have to 
say of our cultured friend will find a hospitable 
reception from the readers of this book, which, I 
suppose, will generally be Spiritualists, or the philo- 
spiritual class ; for though the intellectual stars now 
shining in our firmament of thought are many and 
notable compared with the earlier days of the cause, 
Epes Sargent, as editor, poet, scholar, and litterateur 
was conspicuous, and a credit to this fast-rising and 
spreading light. 

I have known him as townsman and neighbor a 
great many years, from a comparatively young man 
to a somewhat old one, — that is, if a man is old 
when he is in the sixties. I saw, however, much 
more of him during his last decade than at any earlier 
period of his life, our similarity of thought drawing 
us into closer intellectual communion. 



106 SHADOWS. 

I was somewhat informed of his last book, " The 
Scientific Basis of Spiritualism," in advance of its 
publication, and it was with much pleasure I said 
" Yea, verily,'' to him when he presented me a copy, 
and said he would be glad for me to give in print my 
opinion of it. I said to Mr. Sargent : " I will do so 
with pleasure, but you know my way of presenting a 
thing is very different from your way. You are schol- 
arly and methodic, and I make no pretensions to the 
literary guild. I am, you know, a Bohemian in the 
pen line, though well-behaved morally." "I want 
you," said he in reply, " to express yourself in your 
own way. I would prefer your sincerity, warmth, 
and naturalness to any closet production from what 
you call scholarly people." 

As I have an interesting reminiscence to relate 
before passing from his name in this connection, I 
will copy a paragraph or two from my article on his 
last book, both as an introduction to the reminis- 
cence referred to and also as a fact in current liter- 
ary life, showing the sacrifices a man even of estab- 
lished reputation makes by identifying himself with 
this subject. 

This, however, is somewhat passing away, and the 
fact that a popular metropolitan minister, like the 
Rev. M. J. Savage, can say, and have it widely 
reported as he did in a late Easter-Sunday sermon : 
" Modern Spiritualism is too big a fact in modern life 
to be ignored ; thousands and thousands in Europe 
and America believe in its central claim. There are 
thousands of silent believers also who do not like to 



EPES SARGENT. 107 

be called knave or fool, and so keep still about it, 
and, like Nicodenius, they come by night, lest they 
be cast out of the synagogue." It shows, as he says, 
it is too large a matter now to be ignored. 

The paragraph referred to that I propose to copy 
from the old article of which I have spoken, reads as 
follows : — 

" As plenty as books are, it is no ordinary thing 
when a man of thought and culture, who has a hear- 
ing, writes a book on a subject that has had his care- 
ful study and investigation for a score or two of 
years, and especially when, as in the matter before 
us, after these pains and study, he writes a book on 
an unpopular subject, a subject avoided by the leading 
minds of the age, because prejudice and fashion are 
against it, because no credit is to be gained by the 
effort in its behalf in the world of letters; in fact, 
when the history of its investigation has shown with- 
out an exception that no amount of erudition, or 
reputation for wisdom, no successes in other fields of 
literary or scientific pursuits on their part, have been 
sufficient to secure for its witnesses a respectful or 
respectable hearing in the aristocracy of letters ; or, 
putting it in the mildest form, any favorable report, 
or any defense of the subject on the ground of its 
basis of truth, or its worthiness of attention, — the 
verdict has been in each case by his iellow-savants, 
that the man thus bearing witness to the unpopular 
fact is in his dotage, or getting credulous as he grows 
old, or has been duped by imposition in fields where 
he was not expert. 



108 SHADOWS. 

"A book, then, on this subject 'with the image 
and superscription of Caesar upon it,' so to speak, is 
an extraordinary thing, and should be welcomed by 
the body politic of Spiritualists, and also, to some 
extent, by the educated outside world, who are so 
apt to think that nothing good comes out of Naza- 
reth. 

"The history of every scholar, or man of estab- 
lished reputation, who has become more or less iden- 
tified with or has defended modern Spiritualism, will 
warrant the assertion I have made, and that in a 
popular sense the ' Light ' in literature and science 
who undertakes its investigation, if fair and honest, 
has everything to lose and nothing to gain, except 
the consoling fact of its truth. 

"If a man is in eclipse on account of it today, his 
shining hour will arrive sometime, at least in the 
hereafter, and this especial truth being the perpetuity 
of individual conscious life beyond the grave, the 
consolation referred to is a compensation in a very 
peculiar sense." 

The reminiscences to w 7 hich I have referred, and 
considering what I have said and quoted in the light 
of an introduction, is as follows : — 

Jt was a short time, perhaps a week, after I had 
attended Mr. Sargent's funeral, that I was sitting at 
the writing-table in my library, pen in hand, calcu- 
lating to work on a matter that I had put off until 
then, and was proposing to devote the evening to it. 
My eye accidentally fell on the lines with which I 
began this chapter. They were in my scrap-book ; 



EPES SARGENT. 109 

they had a red-pencil mark against them, as if at 
some previous time they had made an impression 
upon me. At that moment they seemed to speak to 
me as if there really was a man or a spirit back of 
them, and I have a strong impression there was. 

I read them, and thinking of Epes Sargent who had 
then so lately deceased, I said aloud, as if in response 
to the Lamb lines: "Yes, of course, we will!" I 
seemed to feel that he was speaking to me those 
words, as he had done when he was alive and talking 
with me. Only a few weeks before that evening he 
was sitting opposite me at this table where I am now 
writing. He spent, as he often had, an hour or so. 
with me in social converse, — getting the news, as he 
called it, — as he lived more in the closet than I did, 
I living more in the world of affairs, so we could 
change our center of gravity and be mutually bene- 
ficial. 

I had a very strong feeling that he was sitting 
there then as an invisible spirit, — there was the same 
soft chair that he occupied then as a visible one. I 
often feel the presence of unseen company in this 
way when I am alone. Longfellow expresses my 
thought in this connection better than I can, so I 
will quote the verse, and I did audibly at the time of 
which I am speaking : — 

"His presence haunts this room tonight, 
A force of mingled mist and light 

From that far coast. 
Welcome beneath this roof of mine ! 
Welcome ! this vacant chair is thine, 
Dear friend and ghost ! " 



i 



110 SHADOWS. 

Referring to the lines again of Charles Lamb, 
which set my pen in motion at the time in this direc- 
tion, instead of doing the work that I was intending 
to do, " Sprightly " hardly applies to oar late " guest 
and ghost," for he was the reverse of that ; he was 
genial, but very solid and thoughtful ; so far also 
from my being sprightly, I have wondered what he 
found to appreciate in me, for by the application of 
my being his " sprightly neighbor," and he was my 
sedate and thoughtful one. I do not claim the cog- 
nomen ; I only mention it because he has expressed 
an interest in my peculiar way of saying things, 
which, as everyone knows, is quite the reverse of 
his way. He was scholarly and very careful, — 1 am 
only natural. 

I appreciated his able additions to spiritual litera- 
ture. How thankful we all ought to be that, with 
his prestige of literary standing, he so identified him- 
self with Spiritualism. 

I had one or two sittings with Susan Nickerson 
White, the late well-known medium, within a week 
or two after his decease, one of them the next day after 
his funeral, not for the purpose of communicating 
with him, but for another object entirely, and one or 
two during the subsequent week or two. I will give 
a brief sketch of them where they refer to him. 
They interested me as being worthy of record, so 
that I now do not wholly draw on my memory, and 
yet the circumstances are very distinct there also. 

Mr. Sargent's funeral was on Sunday. On the 
next afternoon I had a sitting, as I have said, with 



EPES SARGENT. Ill 

Mrs. White. She said, before going into a trance : 
" I see a man by the side of you ; he is a small man ; 
hair thin and gray, and head a little bald ; he puts 
his hand on your head."' The medium then became 
entranced, and said with a slow, low, and distinct 
voice : " Wetherbee, you can hardly realize it, but I 
am Epes Sargent." I did realize it, and felt from 
the first, when clairvoyantly she said she saw and 
described the small man standing near me, that it 
was Epes Sargent. He then, in the same low and 
distinct voice, quite different from the medium's in 
her normal state, spoke of his change, how he found 
things as he expected, and so would I, he said : "It is 
just the place that we used to expect it would be." 

In the pause that followed, thinking of his funeral 
that I had attended the day before, I remarked to 
him that I was glad that Spiritualism was not ignored 
at his funeral services. "Yes," he replied, "William 
spoke well, did he not? — I mean Mr. William Mount- 
ford." The spirit seemed to correct himself after 
saying William, for I did not know the reverend 
gentleman's name by William, but he, being an old 
friend of Mr. Mountford, it was natural for him to 
say William, but it required the Mountford for me 
to know to whom he referred. I was aware of and 
pleased with the funeral address by him, and so, in 
reply to the spirit said: "Yes, he did speak well." 
After talking in this way a little while, the spirit 
said: "I could not resist the opportunity of com- 
ing to you at this time, but as you are here, Wether- 



112 SHADOWS. 

bee, for other matters, I will take my leave, for your 
friends are already waiting to talk with you." 

I think I have very good reason to think this was 
Epes Sargent's spirit. Mrs. White told me after- 
wards that she did not know Mr. Sargent only by 
reputation ; never saw him in her life that she knew 
of. Most people who knew me as well as Mr. Sargent 
did would call me John when addressing me ; but 
Sargent always called me Wetherbee, and omitting 
the "Mr."; and it will be noticed on this occasion 
that the medium, or the spirit rather, so addressed 
me. It rather seems to me, if there had been a pre- 
tence, at this time it would have been safer to have 
said John (for a spirit is privileged to take liberties) 
than to have called me Wetherbee, and though it is 
only a straw it shows the direction of the wind. 

At a subsequent sitting, Mr. Sargent came in the 
same modest way, only using a very little of the time, 
but enough to let me know that he was my " guest 
and ghost " at my home, leading me to infer from 
what he did say that he had influenced the change of 
work or thought on the evening of which I have 
spoken, where the Lamb-stanza so sentimentally hove 
in sight, as the mariner would say. There is noth- 
ing certain about this as there is about some of my 
experiences, for the fact was very strongly in my 
mind that Epes Sargent was concerned in the cogi- 
tation of which I have spoken, and a spirit might 
have reached it from me on the principle of mind- 
reading ; but, believing as I do, what is the use of 
straining for a negative solution? It pleases me 






EPES SARGENT. 113 

whether it does anybody else or not. I give his 
presence the benefit of the doubt. 

A JOSEPH COOK REMINISCENCE. 

While presenting this article under the heading of 
Epes Sargent, I may as well add to it a page or two 
in relation to the Rev. Joseph Cook, in connection 
with him, referring to his investigation of the phe- 
nomena at Mr. Sargent's house. I hardly need to 
say that I am no hero-worshiper, and am very apt 
to think that one man is about equal to another in 
one sense, or, at least, in the absolute sense ; but 
there are some people who, from luck, ability, or cir- 
cumstances have a prestige or prominence among 
their fellows, so that what they say or do has more 
effect, gets a wider hearing, carrying with it an influ- 
ence more than the average. 

A suggestive statement may be made by a nobody, 
so to speak, the utterer an obscure individual, and 
but little attention given to it ; but the same state- 
ment uttered by a Wendell Phillips, or other notable, 
and it gets a hearing from one end of the country to 
the other. It is an idea of this kind that leads me to 
speak of Joseph Cook in this connection. He seems 
to havQ become (or had in the day of which I am 
now speaking) one of the prominent evangelical 
lights, giving a course or two of lectures in the Old 
South Church, in Boston, which was a feature in the 
religious doings of that city. 

His utterances were so sensational as well as bright, 
aiming, or claiming also, to make modern science and 



114 SHADOWS. 

religion coalesce or harmonize, that his discourses, 
reported in full in the respectable dailies, were read 
by a million people, and furnished the thought for 
half the evangelical pulpits in New England. He, 
therefore, is one of the prominent men whose sayings 
and doings were of more consequence than any hun- 
dred perhaps of equally able men. This, then, is the 
reason why I think what I have to say of his investi- 
gation a matter of more than passing notice. 

After Mr. Sargent had received from me the per- 
fect evidence I had had of spirit-writing, and having 
gone himself, and under somewhat remarkable cir- 
cumstances, got the communication that was so self- 
satisfying, he followed it up, giving a good deal of 
attention to Mr. Watkins's phenomenon, and it was 
frequently given at his own house, and he and his 
family had great proof of the perfect genuineness of 
the manifestations. I have before me now a long com- 
munication of his that was printed in the Boston 
Transcript, full of such convincing points and de- 
tailed statements that anyone believing the testi- 
mony of Epes Sargent, the scholarly author of the 
" Scientific Basis of Spiritualism," could not help 
believing in modern Spritualism. Some of them are 
worth repeating here, but having in my mind the 
Cook investigation, I think I had better confine 
myself to that. 

Mr. Sargent, learning that Mr. Cook would like to 
witness some of the phenomena with Watkins in 
some respectable way, a seance was arranged for his 
benefit. This was on March 13, 1880. In speaking 



EPES SARGENT. 115 

of it afterwards at the next Monday's lecture to his 
large audience in the Old South, he began with these 
words (I copy them from the report in the Boston 
Advertiser*) : — 

"In the library of Epes Sargent, last Saturday, I con- 
sented to see a psychic, of whom I had heard various things, 
some of them not altogether reassuring. I took with me my 
family physician (laughter) and my wife (laughter and 
applause). In the company of nine persons assembled in 
the library there were four believers and five unbelievers in 
Spiritualism." 

He then gave the details of the experiments, say- 
ing where they were satisfactory and where they 
were unsatisfactory. There were many points of 
each. A careful reading of each of these depart- 
ments will show to any fair-minded man that the 
satisfactory points were in no way impaired by the 
reading of the unsatisfactory ones. I suppose they 
were qualifications, or loop-holes, for partial retreat, 
should he be hurting his usefulness or popularity by his 
admissions. The paper signed by all present, includ- 
ing Joseph Cook, speaks for itself, and is all any 
Spiritualist asks of an outsider, " that fraud does not 
account for it ; " the solution will take care of itself. 
Here is a copy of the document that Joseph Cook 
and the others signed : — 

" At the house of Epes Sargent, on the evening of Satur- 
day, March 13, 1880, the undersigned saw two clean slates 
placed face to face, with a bit of slate-pencil between them. 



116 SHADOWS. 

We all held our hands clasped around the edges of the two 
slates. Mr. Watkins's hands also clasped the slates. 

" In this position, we all distinctly heard the pencil mov- 
ing, and on opening the slates found an intelligent message, 
in a strong, masculine hand, in answer to a question asked 
by one of the company. 

" Afterwards, two slates were clamped together with 
strong brass fixtures, and held at arm's length by Mr. Cook, 
while the rest of the company and the psychic had their 
hands in full view on the table. Aiter a moment of wait- 
ing, the slates were opened, and a message, in a feminine 
hand, was found on one of the inner surfaces. There were 
five lighted gas-burners in the room at the time. 

"We cannot apply to these facts any theory of fraud, and 
we do not see how the writing can be explained, unless mat- 
ter in the slate-pencil was moved without contact." 

The paper, of which the above is an exact copy, 
signed by Mr. Cook and the others, speaks for itself. 
Mr. Sargent often spoke to me of this seance, and the 
circumstances, and said Mr. Cook was very much 
pleased and interested in what he saw, and came to 
him at starting, saying : " I thank you, Mr. Sargent, 
for the opportunity of seeing the manifestations 
under such favorable circumstances ; the back-bone 
of materialism is broken." I am very particular in 
the wording of this parting statement, and know I 
have got it exactly right, for Mr. Sargent mentioned 
it to me at least four times that I distinctly remem- 
ber. 



ON LEAiraTESS OF THOUGHT. 

The deficiency is made up by the sensuous proof of a 
spiritual source. 

There is much in current Spiritualism that violates 
the taste of cultured, intellectual people, at least 
those outside of our ranks. The phenomenal, or 
sensuous, phases in themselves lack dignity, especi- 
ally as in dealing with them we are dealing with the 
dead. The intellectual or ethical phases, also, are 
lean as mental efforts, especially when attributed to 
departed people of celebrity. 

In making this remark I have the latter phase 
more especially in my mind. The source adds luster 
to the sensuous, irrespective of its quality of thought, 
as being instructive or entertaining. Crabs, scorpi- 
ons, goats, and fishes become sublime when hung up 
as signs of the zodiac, says Emerson ; and, in like 
manner, do table-tippings, and grotesque movements 
of ponderable bodies become sublime when such 
movements are signs of invisible intelligence. 

So does the source fatten any leanness in the 
intellectual phase ; but the source in the latter is not 

117 



118 SHADOWS. 

so self-evident as is the sensuous class. There is 
often so little bread to so much sack, when looked at 
from an outside standpoint. So many communica- 
tions or discourses coming from the vanished stars of 
intellect, or historic lights, that show a shrinkage of 
ability, that it often occurs to me, or, rather, it is 
often said to me, is the product worth all the trouble ? 
Wading through slaughter to a throne, is the throne 
of the truth when reached worthy of the struggle ? 
Is the button of value valuable enough to compen- 
sate for the handling of so much scoria, or base 
metal ? I think it is, for it supplies a human need, 
a necessity, and it cannot be found outside of the 
subject; but, finding it, it casts a luster outside and 
beyond itself, and brings to the front and into notice 
valuable lore, — truth that would otherwise remain 
in the domain of fancy, fable, or disease. 

Experiencing what I have, and the leanness of 
much of that experience, I never blame anyone from 
falling by the way and giving up the struggle, look- 
ing a little ways, then retreating, as Prof. Tyndall 
did, and as Prof. Crookes did not. Both of these 
savants were satisfied, it seems, one in one way, and 
one in the other. 

I have nothing to do with superficial examinations 
of an affair, or with people who presume they have 
encompassed it, when I know they have not. I am 
only too thankful that my first experience was such 
an unmistakable clincher as to sustain me, in this 
desert of thought, if one chooses to call it so, until I 
reached another oasis, and so it has ever been. 



ON LEAXNESS OF THOUGHT. 119 

A circumstance in my domestic life, lasting for 
nearly two years, coming at an opportune time, 
seems to have been all that I needed to make my 
affirmative convictions enduring, even if one chooses 
to consider it, as I have said, among the average 
leanness of its- current thought. The momentum 
obtained from the circumstance referred to would 
have been sufficient had the " Gates Ajar " been for- 
ever thereafter closed to have kept me constant in the 
line of its thought. Of this, more will be said here- 
after. 

One cannot help noticing the manifest relative 
weakness of the thought that comes from the spirit- 
ual Channings and Parkers, the Shakespeares and 
the Miltons, compared to their utterances when they 
were in the form. They are often, however, master- 
pieces of good intellectual work for the instruments 
uttering the thoughts, who are often people without 
education. I remember once a young lady, conspicu- 
ous now on the spiritual platform, who was present 
at a friend's house, where the parlors were filled with 
intelligent and cultured people, some of them emi- 
nently so ; and an erudite and difficult subject was 
given to this young trance-speaker to address them 
upon ; and it was a remarkable discourse, eloquent, 
finished, and logical. That it would have been a 
creditable effort for most anyone, the following col- 
loquy will show: — 

C. C. Felton, the then professor, afterwards presi- 
dent, of Harvard College, who was one of the listen- 
ers on that occasion, congratulated her on the dis- 



120 SHADOWS. 

course, and added, rather pleasantly : "Now, own up 
and say it was yourself, and take the credit that 
would belong to you as one of the most cultivated 
ladies of the country." She replied to him : " I 
would be very glad to, if it was only true ; but 1 do 
not claim it as my effort; I know it was not myself, 
for I know nothing of the subject." I do not think 
Prof. Felton believed her, but I did, for I knew well 
the history or circumstances of her life. 

For all that, and similar inspirational addresses, 
most of the utterances made by the departed intel- 
lectual lights through living organisms, as I have said, 
show a great falling off in quality, that, judging from 
a human standpoint, the parties, if in the form them 
selves, would be ashamed of their productions, and 
would never have uttered them ; and from such a 
standpoint it is reasonable to suppose they never did, 
and allowing their thought to partake of the channel, 
the brain of the medium being used by such a spirit 
with its deficiencies, so as to convey it in- bad gram- 
mar and lack of characteristic finish, even if the 
thought be in harmony, such a spirit would hardly 
allow his thought to go abroad in such an ill dress. 

It would seem as if the dictating spirit can only 
know it as he expresses it, presuming it issues into 
mortal hearing as he gives it out, not perceiving its 
outcome in the mundane sphere. This can hardly be 
the case, though it is possible. Of course there are 
grand and eminent exceptions to this watering of 
thought, but enough of the deficiencies are noticeable 
to make the claim a subject of criticism, especially 



ON LEANNESS OF THOUGHT. 121 

among those who view it superficially, or from the 
outside, and have never looked inte the philosophy or 
the dynamics of the subject only as a passing affair. 
I have spoken of a domestic circumstance. Now, 
to be more explicit, one of the most fruitful periods 
of my life, in connection with this subject, was the 
residence of a young woman in my house for a long 
period as a wet-nurse for our youngest child. She 
proved to be the best medium I ever met. This was 
nearly a score of years ago. She did not live long 
after her time was over with us. I hardly think I 
appreciated as I ought this remarkable privilege that 
I enjoyed. I had not the experience then that I have 
had since, but I have many times been led to appre- 
ciate the poetic truth, — 

"That blessings brighten as they take their flight." 

This young woman was a Catholic; did not know 
she was a medium. When I discovered the manifes- 
tations, she did not, in her ignorance, know what 
Spiritualism meant. She had almost every phase of 
the phenomena, — the movement of ponderable bodies 
without physical contact, raps on tables, chairs, and 
walls, at a distance or near ; and, by her aid, all the 
old familiar names of departed friends, relations, and 
ancestors announced themselves, and often proved, 
in a remarkable manner, their identity. I often got 
the full names of people, and circumstances that I 
had to verify, proving her source of information to 
be both authentic, and beyond her knowledge and 
mine also until I had hunted up the matter. 



122 SHADOWS. 

We had not then reached in the history of Spirit- 
ualism the phase of materialization ; I have no doubt 
she would have had that power also, if she had lived 
longer. She had the feature of materialization in its 
early type of that time, more apparent from the sense 
of touch than of sight. For instance : In a perfectly 
light room, perhaps of a sunny afternoon, seated 
around a small, square table, wife and I, vis-a-vis, 
this young woman on the side between us, sometimes 
a fourth person would occupy the other vacant side, 
but usually it was we three, our six hands were in 
sight flat on the table, then one of the hands being 
put under the table, leaving the other five hands 
before us in sight. The hand under the table could 
feel invisible hands, sensible to the touch, and intelli- 
gent in their manipulations. This was to us a new 
and very strange manifestation. 

There was no deception about it, and could not 
be, under the circumstances. They improved and 
grew more distinct, even demonstrative, as we got 
interested in them. It was worthy of notice that 
some people who might make the fourth party were 
obstacles to the phenomenon. I certainly did not 
understand it, for it certainly was not due to any 
skeptical element in the new comer. Sometimes the 
party would be a Spiritualist who was the disturbing 
element, and by no means positive or mentally 
opposed, rather hoped for, and came expecting suc- 
cess, while sometimes the fourth party would not be a 
Spiritualist, had no faith in the belief, and we found 
no interruption with him to the manifestations. 



OX LEANNESS OF THOUGHT. 123 

This, certainly, shows that the obstacle is not a 
mental one, and, whatever it is, it seems to be con- 
stitutional, — a non-conducting element in the per- 
son. But I will not enlarge upon that point here ; 
but, it being an unmistakable fact, it will show that 
the later and more extended phase of full-form mate- 
rializations, the character of which good people differ, 
may be affected for better or worse by the persons 
constituting the circle. 

I will close this chapter by describing some of my 
our experiences in this phase ; that is, where I put my 
hand under the table, of which I have spoken, and 
the remaining five hands being in sight on the table. 
I often had more than touches, or manipulations ; I 
very often grasped what seemed a human hand, and 
certainly was one, and certainly it was not the hand 
of a mortal in the form, nor a dummy. It was, appar- 
ently, flesh and blood and bones, and felt like any- 
body's or human hand. 

These hands at different times were of different 
sizes and forms. Sometimes a child's hand, some- 
times, by signification, it was a sister's hand, or a 
grandmother's. We all had this experience many 
times, I ought to say, myself, hundreds of times. 
My sister, who did much sewing when she was in the 
form, when the mysterious hand claimed to be hers, 
and tried to have me identify it, she allowed me to 
feel the end of her finger, the roughness of the cuti- 
cle that much sewing caused was perceptible and 
recognizable. I felt also the ring on her finger, and 
as far as touch without sight could tell, it seemed like 



124 SHADOWS. 

her ring ; but her ring then was owned by another 
party in another State, so it must have been evolved 
out of the circumambient air for the occasion, and 
the same, of course, of the hand itself, that is mate- 
rialized. 

One thing I will notice. No matter how firm a 
grip I might have had, I could never draw this spirit 
hand out into the light so that I could have occular 
proof as well as proof by touch and manipulation. I 
would try sometimes to coax it out from under the 
table, and the hand seemed to make no objection, but 
it never would come ; the grip would limber, the hand 
lose its density, and before it reached in my hand the 
end of the table for optical demonstration, I held 
nothing, — it had dissolved, so it never was an object 
of sight, though it was tangibly manifest. 

I will have occasion to speak again of some experi- 
ences with this home-medium in other illustrations, 
so I will leave this matter here, having said sufficient 
for the purposes of this chapter, and certainly com- 
pensates for any leanness of thought in some of the 
inspired utterances referred to ; for who will not say 
that the sensuous touch of a "vanished hand " exter- 
nally, that is real in a material sense, is not more 
eloquent than words, and by the side of which the 
highest reaches of eloquence become insignificant 
and tame ? 






XL 

PRO-SPIRITUALISM. 

An article written for. and published in* ; - The 
Radical.*' 

When The Radical, a bright magazine, was alive. I 
was asked by its editor to write an article for it on 
modern Spiritualism. That showed the liberality of 
that able, "free religious" periodical, for the subject 
then was more in literary eclipse than it is now, 
though it is nut yet out of the Philistinian domain. 

As this article did not reach the eye of many 
Spiritualists, not being written for them. I have 
thought, though it was written nearly a decade ago. 
that I would copy it from that magazine for one of 
the chapters of this book. It is not exactly as 1 
would have written it today, but much of it is worth 
perusal, and in some form should be herein pre 
more, perhaps, for illustration of some of the ot 
chapters of this book than for information. The fol- 
lowing is the article to which I have referred : — ■ 

Modern Spiritualism add] itself emphatically 

to the senses, differing fundamentally from all forms 
of religion in that respect, unless Roman Christianity 

125 



126 SHADOWS. 

be an exception. That, to be sure, addresses the 
senses, but only to the ignorant ; the intelligent per- 
ceive significations underlying the symbols ; but then 
the significations, becoming definite in such minds, 
are evangelical, — which means unscientific, hence 
anti-rational. So, I repeat, it differs from all other 
forms of religion on that point. Is it in conflict or in 
harmony with the inner sense or soul deep, which no 
mental plummet has ever yet sounded; which is 
marked on the oldest charts " no bottom ; " and 
which, with all the additions of later or modern 
explorers, is still marked " no bottom ? " Perhaps 
here is not the time or place to answer that question, 
only to think of it. 

Of all ages, this is the inductive or practical age ; 
and we are a people marked with inductive or prac- 
tical tendencies. Dealing with facts is always popu- 
lar, and has on its side the multitude, who observe 
rather than think, and, of course, are not inclined to 
listen to the more subtle teachings of the prophets, 
or those who live before their time, — that is, those 
wdio reason from intuitions or principles downward 
or outward to facts. Henry Thomas Buckle says : 
•'Actions, facts, external manifestations of every 
kind, often triumph for awhile ; but it is the progress 
of ideas which ultimately determines the progress of 
the world." I think few will dispute what is stated 
here on this point : and it reduces itself to this, viz., 
the observers are many, and the thinkers are few, 
and ultimately the thinkers rule the world. 

Modern Spiritualism, its facts or phenomena, is 



PRO-SPIRITUALISM. 127 

here, in triumph, "for awhile," if you choose. It 
may be here by virtue of the demand which the age 
has for facts, as a taste for dreams increases the crop 
of dreamers. It may be here to meet a want once 
supplied by faith, — that faith which science and 
reason (that is, rationalism) have killed. The logic 
of deduction from established principles, so called, is 
adverse to the claims of modern Spiritualism. The 
logic of induction has had no place in this connec- 
tion. There have been heretofore no facts. The 
dead men were dead, and induction is inapplicable to 
and has no connection with theology ; that is bom of 
revelation, assumed. Therefore just as the logic of 
theology was adverse to the fact that the earth was 
a sphere, so is theology and all deductions from pre- 
conceived notions, however liberal in statement, 
adverse to the claim made by modern Spiritualism. 
The world demonstrated to be a sphere, there was 
revolution in the world of mind as well as in the 
world of matter. Demonstrate as clearly this fact, 
— or, rather, the claim based on the fact, — then 
behold another revolution. That point no one will 
dispute. But will it be demonstrated ? What are 
the probabilities? The minds that reason from estab- 
lished principles (or notions true or false), or, to be 
more definite, a man who has the idea that heaven is 
more or less a church-gathering, where dignity and 
greatness have no light dressing of frivolity, but the 
redeemed " are as the angels in heaven," all human 
weaknesses having been left in the grave, and the 
free spirit, or the souls of men, all great, good, and 



128 SHADOWS. 

perfect, — in a word, a sort of rationalized heaven 
with some or all the ancient evangelical features, — 
such will answer, and, as far as heard from, do, that 
the fact will not be demonstrated as a truth, and 
never ought to be : it would be a libel upon a sensi- 
ble conception of heaven, the dwelling-place of the 
Infinite, and the resting-place for the weary pilgrims 
of earth. 

I am aware I have no authority for reconstructing 
anyone's notion of heaven or its inhabitants, the 
abode either of the blessed or the disembodied; but, 
laying aside the "Planchette " authority, I have as 
much an anyone ; and that, expressed by a symbol, 
is 0. That means, on this subject, assuming, for the 
moment, it is wholly devoid of fact, and wholly in the 
domain of faith, that the thinker or the philosopher 
has no right to assume what the facts or the phenom- 
ena ought to be from logical inferences, and, if antag- 
onistic to his idea, reject on the ground of absurdity 
or trivialitj^, — in other words, judge before a hear- 
ing. We came from monkeys says Charles Darwin. 
We may go back at death to first principles, or be 
monkeys again. No inference can possibly make us 
fear such a destiny ; but no one can say it is not so ; 
and, if investigations should demonstrate that fact, 
it is scientific to follow where the facts lead, and it 
is unscientific and irrational to reject phenomena, 
trivial or silly, which, existing, exist for some pur- 
pose, no matter what. We shall never know till we 
study it ; and, in this connection, no matter the con- 
sequences to our hopes, our expectations or our 



PBO-SPIEITUALIS}!. 129 

vanity. "Where ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be 
wise," may be evangelical : it is by no means rational. 

I know of no subject so deserving of careful, ten- 
der, and critical attention as this one, whether in 
reference to its peculiar associations with our destiny 
or in reference to its wide-spreading influence as 
manifested in the multitude of its adherents. In a 
spirit of inquiry, then, not of dogmatism, let us look 
at the subject. T do so, hoping it to be true; but 
not prejudiced, I think, by that hope. From a great 
multitude of facts, let me select one, for a starting- 
point, from my own experience. I do not qualify 
the word : I mean fact. This detailed statement will 
be an episode in the argument, but it seems to be 
required as an aid or setting to the points I have in 
view. Here is the statement : — 

Ellen was for many years a domestic in our family. 
Ann was a wet-nurse for our baby. Both were Irish 
and Catholics. Ellen was rather old, unmarried, 
steady, and faithful. Ann, the nurse, was a widow 
of about twenty, — ignorant, careless, and lively. 
There had been, in the month or twqthat they had 
lived together with us, several quarrels between 
them ; one quite serious, where it was necessary for 
me to interfere. Ann was accused by Ellen of pull- 
ing the kitchen table from her with her foot while 
kneading bread on it ; had done it, or similar pranks, 
many times. Ann said she did not, and Ellen said 
she did; which led to a "rolling-pin" fight. And, 
without going into details too minutely, I had got to 
part with a healthy nurse or a faithful girl. A nurse, 



130 SHADOWS. 

being a mother by proxy for the time, is mistress in 
the house. One cannot see his baby suffer. So we 
make sacrifices, "hang our harps upon the willows 
when we remember Zion," and pray for the weaning- 
time and freedom. Had it not been for her office, 
Ann would have been turned away without question, 
and at once. As it was, I conciliated Ellen, and 
compelled a truce. 

.In a short time, the same thing occurred up stairs. 
The light-stand seemed to be pulled away towards 
Ann. She was scolded by the mistress. Ann denied 
it, and in the plain evidence of the f iict ; for, while 
scolding, the table jumped. The secret was out : 
Ann was a medium. This girl did not know what 
"medium" signified; and had never heard of the 
word Spiritualism, and did not know its meaning or 
its associations. We visited the kitchen. The table 
moved a foot towards her, untouched. The wdiole 
matter was explained. There had been no lies told. 
As stated, we would have discharged, as a disturber 
and a liar, on positive evidence, and injured an inno- 
cent girl ; in my ignorance, would have done an 
injustice. May not incarnated wisdom, higher up, 
be doing injustice now to some for their honest con- 
clusions on this subject, that a more careful investi- 
gation might at least modify? 

This matter was lengthily and critically examined 
under very favorable circumstances. The details are 
hardly needed here for my purpose. Ann's husband 
and father assumed to be the operators at the spirit 
end of the lines : and, through her, I got communi- 



PPwOSPIRITUALISM. 131 

cations from many persons and relatives ; often some- 
times in reference to furniture and pictures they 
once owned, given for tests, the details of which this 
chance girl could know nothing of; many unknown 
to myself, that inquiry proved to be true. After 
going to confession, she refused to sit any more ; said 
her priest forbade it. He told her the spirit was her 
father, etc. : but she must not sit any more. It was 
wicked, and we were Protestants. The priest, then, 
believed in the fact, it seemed. 

The explanation of his objection did not seem to 
be very intelligible or reasonable ; but I make allow- 
ances for the medium, in mundane matters, just as I 
would one in spiritual. Persuasion overcame her 
objections. I asked her if she still loved her father 
and husband (who were still Catholics on the other 
side). She did, and she believed with the priest, 
that it was her father and her husband, as the com- 
munication claimed. "Then," said I, "suppose we 
ask them ? " If Ann had an}' inclination in the mat- 
ter, it was that they would say : ; * Mind the priest.'' 
Their reply was : " You do perfectly right to sit ; 
and we like it, too, and we love you/' 

As the details of this or any of the phenomena is 
not the object of this communication, I will leave 
what I have inserted here as an episode, and say that 
this matter seems determined to be heard, and will 
not down at anyone's bidding. The scientific jour- 
nals, hitting the right point, say : "What is Plan- 
chette?" I do not expect science, as science, to 
answer. Science deals with matter. When a great 



132 SHADOWS. 

question is asked seriously, in the course of time the 
interpreter will be born. He is as likely to be a car- 
penter's son as a Gamaliel; rather more so, if any con- 
clusions for the future can be gathered from past expe- 
rience: the author of u Ecce Homo" says the world 
is grandly debtor to lowly cradles, which is a truth. 

An anti-Spiritualist, in the Atlantic Monthly, has 
been in the front, and seen the phenomena. Now, 
there is something in it, it has come to me, says he. 
Professors explain it. They still neglect the unclean 
thing, saying to this writer : "Watch it carefully: you 
are deceived." He is snubbed ; he, who is religious 
and respectable, not one of those Spiritualists. He 
forgets it is not the man that makes the matter 
worthy of notice : it is the matter that degrades the 
man, as jet. This late writer tells his story outside 
of the ring of fools. No more a fact for that ; but it 
shows extension, pressing for expression on the line 
of least resistance. It has got beyond the deluded ; 
and, as the volume expands, the fracture extends 
through this late and tougher material. If this sub- 
ject is mythical, we shall know it in the next age if 
not in this. In the meantime, let us soberly treat it. 
Spiritualism is the only form of religion that Amer- 
ica has yet produced ; (please not suggest Mormon- 
ism in this connection, — that de facto is not con- 
fined to Utah or America) ; and, aside from its 
super-mundane claims, is, as to its ethics, just what a 
free people, who, in flowering out, produced the Dec- 
laration of Independence, might suppose to develop 
as a religion. It is essentially independence, liberty, 



PRO-SPIRITUALISM. 133 

and progress, in perfect harmony with the last circle 
of the Protestant wave, — Parkerism, or free religion ; 
just what The Radical represents a 1 ! but the one fact, 
that disembodied Theodore Parker not only lives, 

but speaks to and through mortals 

Humanity grows; and in this age of facts, when 
everything is met and handled in the inductive or 
analytic spirit, which is the logical condition of 
human progress, I am led to ask what the heart- 
tendrils will reach hold of and entwine to support 
this human vine ? I have the many in my mind, not 
the richly endowed few, wealth of thought. Can 
anyone believe that God has left us without a 
witness, not of himself, that evidence is every- 
where, but of his justice ? It is nowhere in material 
philosophy. I go, says Faith; but I will send the 
Comforter, and it will teach you all things. It must 
needs be that I, Faith, go. If I go not, the Com- 
forter will not come. In the midst of rationalism, I 
am looking for what it has not in itself, — the Com- 
forter. Has God left us without the witness ? Mr. 
Weiss has it. He feels his immortality. That satis- 
fies him : he needs no tables to tip for him. He gave 
Theodore Parker the witness. He was sure of the 
other world : this was the one he doubted. But why 
give to Weiss and Frothingham and Parker and Bar- 
tol, and not the many like this writer? Must the 
many take it on trust? Because a few prophets 
have the evidence, must the rest have only faith? 
Rationalism says: No authority but truth. Whose 
truth? Wiry not Calvin's as well as Parker's? 



134 SHADOWS. 

Will God take away, by the law of progress, 
almost universal faith, and leave me without a ray 
of hope ? Because Weiss & Co. are fed with their 
own deductions, and thrive by it, must I starve ? 
Because Weiss's clover will not feed me, must I fall 
back on worms? In the midst of his satisfying 
clover, must Elijah starve because there are no 
ravens ? 

It would seem as though the only witness that the 
age demands, or can satisfy it, is a voice from the 
tomb. Here are phenomena that answer that de- 
mand in its claims. True, it may be an hallucina- 
tion. For reasons already mentioned, — its increas- 
ing influence, and its moral effect, — is not its par- 
ticular fact worthy of attention ? Is there any reason 
why, in writing in its defense, I should lose some- 
thing of my moral and intellectual position, unless I 
weave into the structure of my communication the 
respectable fact or apology that the writer is not a 
believer in the spiritual explanation of these phe- 
nomena ? He makes in this instance no such excuse. 

Now, here is the fact desired, — if it be a fact. If 
it be the once dead speaking, has there been so 
important a question ever considered? Shall Ave 
reject it because it keeps company with Publicans 
and sinners? Shall we refuse to wash and be clean 
because the river is simply Jordan ? Shall we say : 
"What manner of departed spirits are these that play 
on fiddles, and dance tables ; that rap loud and soft 
on tables, walls, and doors?" Shall we say: "Non- 
sense ! " while they every time say : " I am one of 



PPtOSPmiTUALISM. 135 

thy brethren, the prophets " ? Why, it violates all my 
ideas of respect for the departed, and their condition. 
" How are the mighty fallen ! " Shades of great 
Franklin ! you are in twenty places at the same 
time, and all unknown to each other. He must be a 
double-header. Oh, no! foolish dream! — I had 
rather be without the proof, the sweet evidence of 
life beyond the vale, if such is to be the end of all 
my greatness. 

In this connection, bear in mind, there have been 
more atheists and infidels converted from their mate- 
rialism to a belief in the soul's continued existence 
than by all the religious and rational logic -during 
the same time. The great number, among whom is 
this writer, who have by these puerile phenomena, 
perceiving the underlying truth irrespective of its 
details and associations, who have passed from dark- 
ness to light and hope, is a fact or a good so import- 
ant as should command a tender regard for it, set as 
it is so poorly. Pebbles become jewels sometimes by 
their setting. Here may be a jewel spoiled by its 
setting. Common sense (which is vulgar for ration- 
alism) says : " Prove it worthless, or reset it." 

It may be stated here, and truly, that Spiritualists 
do not claim for it admission as a demonstrated truth, 
to be universally accepted, unchallenged. They, of 
all people, say : "Examine for yourselves, and believe 
or reject as your conviction dictates." There may 
be, and probably is, more error than truth in it. 
What venerated institution but must make the same 
confession ? Who would except the church on this 



136 SHADOWS. 

point? Speaking for myself, the communication of 
disembodied spirits with mortals is a demonstrated 
truth. I make this statement with some little crit- 
ical knowledge of mental phenomena, or what is 
called the psychical side of life. A less cautious per- 
son, on the same evidence, might also speak equally 
strong of identity. The identity of individual spirits 
is by no means so established, even in a Spiritualist's 
mind, as that more indefinite one of disembodied 
intelligence. In a word (I am speaking for no one 
but myself now), there is no positive proof that 
Theodore Parker ever spoke to or through a mortal. 
The chances favor the assumption that he may have 
done so, even if the result be silly,— de-Parkerized 
by the process. But that a disembodied spirit, claim- 
ing to be Theodore Parker, or was once some special 
dweller of earth, has communicated through mortals, 
is to me no more a matter of doubt than that a man 
lives in Europe claiming to be Victor Hugo. The 
identity of the living is easy of demonstration ; of 
the other, not so easy. 

The obstacle is not in the quality of thought 
offered as Theodore Parker's. We do not know how 
spirit or mind controls matter, only that, under cer- 
tain conditions, it does ; and we know, further, that 
matter controls spirit also ; that intemperance in eat- 
ing may produce a condition of body, or rather of 
mind, incapacitating it for its master-pieces; and 
Homer nods, or becomes Homer and water, even in 
the form, before he goes to the spirit life. But we 
would assume, or some would, that we know all the 



PRO-SPIRITUALISE. 137 

conditions of transit and association, between spirit 
and mortal life, when we know comparatively noth- 
ing of the connection between out own souls and 
bodies. Shall we say, then, there is nothing prac- 
tical in it? — all unreliable? Let it be so. That is 
another part of the subject. No thoughtful person 
will reject the fundamental fact, if he knows it to be 
a fact, because all we expected or hoped for is net 
available. Perhaps as yet there is not enough of the 
curve given us to measure the circle ; and in time 
we may be qualified. 

With all the crudities in connection with this sub- 
ject, I venture the prophecy that this fact, being 
fundamentally a truth, has come to stay ; and that 
this generation shall not pass away before the church 
as a general thing will adopt it, and it will be the 
warm blood that will give it life. Thus not only 
will it be a feature, but it will be claimed as always 
having been a feature, — latent for awhile, having 
been mixed up with superstition ; but the old remem- 
brances will be heated red-hot again, and the ima^e 
and superscription be made in its reproduction to 
bear testimony not only to the fact, but to its anti- 
quity also. And thus again a stone which the build- 
ers rejected will have become the head of the corner. 



XII. 



HOME MANIFESTATIONS. 



Giving a brief account of phenomena which are loth 
" bottom facts " and " startling factsP 

I had been a Spiritualist four or five years when 
the opportunity opened to me of which I have 
spoken in a previous chapter. It seems to me now 
that the circumstance was a providential one (using 
the word, not in any divine sense, but only in a 
modern spiritual one, which is all the providence I 
know anything about), that this young woman should 
have proved a sort of " gates ajar " to me. 

The article from The Radical, in the last chapter, 
refers to her in an illustrative way, but I think I had 
better briefly speak of her again, having some circum- 
stances to relate in connection with her that are of 
marked importance, if there be any importance in 
argument or experiences. 

When there had been trouble in the kitchen be- 
tween Ann (the name of the nurse) and the domestic, 
it was presumed there had been mischief and lying 
of some kind, but the nurse held the fort, as a mat- 
ter of course, for the life and health of the baby were 

138 



HO^IE MANIFESTATIONS. 139 

in her hands. A week or two after this affair, the 
table in the sitting-room, at which my wife and Ann 
were sitting and sewing, showed a disposition to 
be self-active. It actually jumped and almost upset 
the lamp that was on it, and would had there not 
been intelligence in the movement. 

My wife said to Ann : " Be careful and not hit the 
table, you will set us on fire." " I did not do it," 
said she, and the table jumped again, — markedly so, 

— and both looked at each other. "Did you not do 
that ? " wife said ; and Ann replied : " Xo, marm, I 
did not." Wife felt uneasy, and called up Ellen 
from the kitchen, who was told what had happened ; 
and the table, as if hearing them talk, began its 
antics again, no one touching it. Ellen saying to it : 
"Stop!" but it jumped the more, and all three 
women were surprised and frightened. Ellen then 
said, looking at it firmly : " In Christ's name, stop ! " 

— making the sign of a cross with her finger, and it 
stopped, and no further movement was noticed. 

This was in the evening. When I got home, which 
was soon after, I was told the circumstances, and I 
said to Ann that she must be a medium, and asked 
her to sit down with me at the table ; and then, lav- 
ing our hands on it, I said, if there were any spirits 
present let us know it in some way ; and, in response, 
in a few seconds there was a mild movement, also 
raps ; and, asking who it was, and using the alpha- 
bet, the name of a relative was spelled out ; and as 
soon as I recognized and mentioned the name, the 



140 SHADOWS. 

table signified its satisfaction with applause, if mov- 
ing rapidly may be called applause. 

I will not inflict upon the reader any lengthy 
details of what this beginning led to, but will say I 
had in my two years' experience all the evidence 
that anyone could desire, that this table, or the invisi- 
bles manifesting through it, knew a great deal that 
this girl could not have known, and many things of 
a traditional character from some of my departed 
friends that I had myself to verify. The point to 
mention now is about that row, of which I have 
spoken, which occurred in the kitchen a short time 
before. 

We then went into the kitchen. Ann took her 
place at the end of the table, where she was at the 
time spoken of. Ellen, the other girl, stood in front 
of it, resting her hands on it as if the bread-board 
w^as before her ; and I said : " I wish, if there are any 
spirits here, they would move the table ; " and it 
startled us by its jumping a foot. The whole matter 
explained itself. Ann did not shove the table at the 
time referred to. So, when she said to Ellen : " She 
did n't," she did not lie, as Ellen thought she did. 
The rumpus was explained, and the discovery and 
the succeeding conveniences of protracted manifesta- 
tions are among the most interesting circumstances 
in my life, as I have already said. 

I understand the matter now better than I did 
then. This occurred during my first decade in my 
connection with Spiritualism. I am now near the end 
of my third decade. It is possible my remarkable 



HOME MANIFESTATIONS. 141 

opportunities have saved me in the line so as to see 
a third decade. When these home manifestations 
came to me it lowered my estimation of the spirit 
world in dignity. Why did it want to disturb my 
kitchen affairs ? I learned later that it was to attract 
attention. I am very glad, then, it so stooped for 
my benefit, but I cannot even yet think I was of con- 
sequence enough for it, or any part of it. It cer- 
tainly has added to my happiness, if not to my repu- 
tation, to have a knowledge of this subject, and be 
interested in it. I hope the spirit world is not sorry 
it thus waked me up, or wasted thought or time on 
me ; but if a man is only a bramble-bush, he cannot 
bear grapes or figs. 

In speaking on this point, it reminds me how 
much I have had to combat with people's sense of 
propriety. " It cannot be spirits," say they ; u have 
they nothing better to do than to tip tables and play 
poorly on musical instruments, with the lights out?" 
u Seems "to me," say some, u if I were a spirit, I would 
hope to be better employed; I would not do such 
tilings now, and I hope I shall not lower myself when 
I have done with earth and become an angel." Peo- 
ple are inclined to look at the act itself, not what 
prompts the act, and there is where such people are 
wrong. 

I look at these things now very differently from 
what I once did. There is no fascination, instruc- 
tion, or entertainment in the movement of material 
things in the way mentioned, simply as movements ; 
but if one is persuaded that it is a departed spirit, 



142 SHADOWS. 

taking that way to make you realize his or her pres- 
ence, is there then not fascination, — not in the thing, 
or the grotesque movement, but in the invisible intel- 
ligence that is manifesting through or with it? 

Now, with these considerations, notice the follow- 
ing incident in my experience. I state it as a posi- 
tive fact, as unmistakable a one as the fact that I am 
now writing these words. I will do it elaborately, 
for it made a deep impression upon me, so have also 
many others, but I will relate this one as an illustra- 
tion of my point. 

I was sitting at the window, in our sitting-room, 
reading a newspaper one afternoon. My wife was 
resting on a sofa on the other side of the room. In 
the center of it, and not very far from me, was a 
small table. Ann — this Endoric member of my 
household — was sitting, not at, but very near, this 
table, sewing, or repairing some dress, and at the 
table was a little son of mine, some six or seven years 
old. Hearing some raps on the table, he said : " Is 
that you, Hattie ? " (that was the name of his sister 
who had died some years before) and the response to 
his question was three raps. We all heard them, 
which meant, in spiritual parlance : " Yes." The 
little fellow then says: "Oh, mother, Hattie is here, 
she says so! " "Well," says the mother, "go on and 
talk with her, and see what she will say." 

The boy then said: "Hattie, have I been a good 
boy today?" and the answer was three raps, or 
"yes." And while asking one or two questions in 
this way, the supper-bell rang, and the little boy, 



903IE MANIFESTATIONS. 143 

while getting off the stool on which he was sitting, 
said: "Hattie, will j t ou come and talk to me after 
tea ? " And the mother, as she arose from the sofa, 
said : u Why do n't j^ou ask her to come down to sup- 
per with you ? " We were amused to see him take 
her literally, as he said: "Hattie, will j~ou come 
down to supper with me ? " And as he said this, he 
had got off of his stool, and the table, untouched, was 
tipping in reply; and as the little fellow moved then 
towards the door, the table followed him, nobody 
touching it, — it seemed to slide along smooth!}' 
towards the door. When it got to the threshhold, 
which was a little obstruction, it paused a second, 
and then jumped over the slight elevation, and con- 
tinued its movement a few feet to the head of the 
stairs, seemed to make an effort or two as if tipping, 
then stopped. 

Now, as 1 have said, I am stating literally the 
exact truth. It being so, was not that an intelligent 
act? Did not the invisible intelligence controlling 
that table hear the little boy's question, and could 
he, she, or it say any plainer than this movement : 
"Yes, I thank you, I will go with you."' The poet tells 
us there are sermons in stones. I believe it : and 
sometimes these voiceless orations are more eloquent 
than are the uttered words of a master. It does 
seem to me as if the bright words of the most elo- 
quent preacher pale and sink into insignificance by 
the side of such mute preaching as the movement of 
that table, showing the interest of a departed sister 
in her little brother in the form. 



144 SHADOWS. 

I hardly know how to stop, so many of these 
experiences crowd into my mind, as if pressing for 
expression; but I will hold them back, and close 
this chapter by relating a circumstance of a different 
kind, but certainly of a very convincing and encour- 
aging character. 

On one occasion, when Ann had been sitting for 
us, and with us for over a year, she declined to sit ; 
said she was not going to do so any more. Being 
pressed for the reason, she said the priest had told 
her she must not. Ann was a Catholic, but had not 
been to confession since she came to live with us, 
but she had lately been, and, among her other sins, 
confessed to sitting with us for these manifestations. 
She wanted to oblige us, but was afraid to. 

This priest had told her that the spirits who came 
were really the spirits of Andrew and Peter (the 
names of her husband and father), 'but that she did 
not belong to that or our circle. That sitting with 
us for such a purpose was wicked, and forbid it in the 
usual Catholic way. I tried to persuade her, but did 
not succeed, so I became strategetic, and said to her : 
" You say the priest said the spirits that came were 
your husband and father?" "Yes," said she, " the 
priest said so." " Were they good Catholics ? " 
"Yes," said she. "And you thought a good deal of 
them, did you ? " " Oh, certainly ! " "Which do you 
think would know better what was right, your hus- 
band and father, who are now spirits in the other 
world, or the priest, who has not been there yet ? " 
She hesitated, but said she thought they would. 



HOME MANIFESTATIONS. 145 

"Now," says I, "Ann, I do not want you to do 
anything wrong, but I want you to sit just once, to 
ask Andrew and Peter whether it is right or wrong, 
for they will know, — will they not ? and the priest 
says they are really Andrew and Peter." She could 
not object to so reasonable a request, and she did so ; 
and, the raps coming, says I : "Who is this?" And 
the reply was: "Andrew." Says I: "Andrew, is it 
wrong for Ann to sit in this way for these manifes- 
tations?" And the reply was aloud "No." "Do 
you think Ann had better sit for us, as she has been 
doing ? " And the answer came : " Yes." " You 
see," said I to Ann, "what your father and husband 
both say, and you know it is really they, for the 
priest says it is, and they, being in the spirit world, 
ought to know better than the priest, had they not?" 
And Ann thought so, and made no further objection. 

The remembrance of this colloquy, growing out 
of her confession, always pleased me ; I flanked 
the priest adroitly from his own logic. I also got 
the admission, indirectly, of him that the manifes- 
tations were the work of spirits. It was always 
pleasant also to have Ann feel that her father and 
her husband had a hand in this matter. I ought 
to add, which may be suggestive, also, that Andrew 
and Peter were the spirits that did most of this mys- 
terious work, that is, when a table moved, they were 
the spirits that did it, or they seemed to be the spirits 
that controlled her, certainly for the sensuous or 
physical manifestations. 

I have found in many instances that the spirits 



146 SHADOWS. 

who make these physical manifestations, or move- 
ments, are not the higher class of spirits, but spirits 
-who are but a slight remove from palpable presence. 
I have been told that Theodore Parker cannot move 
a material object, or tip a table, but he can read the 
mind and influence the intellect ; that it is a more 
earthly class of spirits that, in this sensuous way, 
make themselves manifest. My experience with Ann 
seems to rather indorse the idea. 



XIII. 

SEERSHIP OR CLAIRVOYANCE. 

Giving an account of phenomena with an intelligent 
and sometimes a prophetic basis. 

"And that should teach us 
There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." — Shakespeare. 

If, when Henry W. Longfellow, in his poetical 
address to his class in Bowdoin College, on its fiftieth 
anniversary, said : — 

" Not to the living only be they said, 
But to that other living, called the dead," 

it was not a fancy merely, but a truth ; that if he 
really felt or believed that there was an unseen audi- 
ence as well as a visible one listening to him, — or, to 
express the thought in another way, if there is a spirit- 
ual environment around this world of sense, — then 
the divinity referred to that doth hedge us about, as 
the poet says, is a very rational idea. I think a better 
word than " divinity " could be used to express it, 
but the fact would be all the same ; and you know a 
rose by any other name would smell as sweet. 

147 



148 SHADOWS. 

This fact of such an environment being admitted, 
how it seems to warm up this world, illuminating 
the whole picture of human life. Everything then 
puts on new forms of beauty, changing deformity 
and fable into beauty and truth. I do not propose 
now to argue this point, and make such an environ- 
ment appear either reasonable or truthful. It is a 
fact to me, and I merely say what I have stated as a 
sort of setting to an interesting fact in my family 
experience, which, in connection with this subject, 
is worth relating. 

There are many similar cases ; in fact, traditional 
as well as general family records are full of legendary 
lore, mysterious or superstitious, or otherwise, out of 
repute as good common sense, that the fact being 
demonstrated of a spiritual world surrounding and 
permeating this, would come into line as both possi- 
ble and respectable facts. That is the reason why 
the one I propose to relate, under the light of my 
spiritualistic ideas, will, I think, be a matter of 
interest. 

My grandmother was a seeress. I lived in the 
house with her for the first twenty years of my life, 
and for ten or fifteen years more, near by, supervis- 
ing her until she died. Now, while her spirit which 
now seems to be in my surroundings, and also the 
spirit of her daughter, my mother, I feel moved to 
use the words of Coleridge (in his " Sibylline " lines, 
I think) as my own : — 

" Blest spirits of my parents, 
Ye hover o'er me now ! Ye shine on me ! 



SEEESHIP OU CLAIRVOYANCE. 149 

And, like a flower that coils forth from a ruin, 
I feel and seek the light I cannot see." 

What would I not give to have the advantage 
today that I had during her lifetime. But I was like 
the disciples at Emmaus, who did not realize the 
departed Master's presence until he had gone. With 
the optics of today, or my spiritualistic experience 
to notice the phenomena of which I am going to 
speak, that occurred from 1825 to 1845, that would, 
indeed, be a privilege. 

This ancestor was a good and sensible woman, 
rather sickly, or thought she was, being of a nervous 
constitution. The household, consisting of her sons 
and daughters and a few grandchildren, knew noth- 
ing of seeresses or seers in their day, but considered 
her clairvoyant sights as simply imagination or ner- 
vousness. Certainly, her best clairvoyant visions 
were when she was not feeling well, or under the 
weather, as we sometimes say. We all considered 
what she saw, and which nobody else saw in this 
way, was the product of poor health, and had no 
foundation really, though they seemed real to her. 
We pitied her, but loved and respected her, as other- 
wise she was a very gifted woman, with sterling, 
human, motherly qualities, but hurt some by this 
mixture of the mysterious and strange, or of a super- 
stitious character. 

All her life, or all I know of it, which was her last 
thirty years, she could see the spirits of dead people, 
as she called them, though they always looked alive, 
or as they did when they were alive. Hardly a week 



150 SHADOWS. 

passed without her referring to such visits. They 
were, as I have said, more persistent or frequent 
when her health was poor ; hence, in the minds of 
the family, the subject was looked upon as disease. 

These subjective apparitions were always the forms 
and faces of departed people, never of living ones, — 
generally relatives, brothers, sisters, or her children. 
She was one of a family of twelve, and she was the 
mother, also, of twelve, and my mother was the last 
of them to pass away a few years ago, aged eighty- 
four. Most of her children had died in young man- 
hood or womanhood, so there were many to come to 
her in this way, and they very often did. I think 
everyone of her brothers and sisters, my great uncles 
and aunts, had at one time or another put in their 
ghostly appearance, if such phenomena can be called 
appearances. I am as familiar with them, from her 
description when thus appearing, as I am tradition- 
ally, as the greater part of them died before I saw 
them. 

Notwithstanding the family-feeling that these 
"second-sights," as they were called, were weak- 
nesses that better health or a less nervous or sensitive 
organization would have relieved her from, none of 
us liked to have her tell of any ominous ones that 
might be premonitions, — " showing," as Dr. John- 
son said, " by our fears our faith in them," for they 
were very apt to be previsions. I will relate one 
that I remember well, as it made a great impression 
on me, and this will suggest the character of some 
of the others. 



SEERSRIP OR CLAIRVOYANCE. 151 

On one occasion this old lady said to me that she 
felt very down-hearted, — that she had had a vision 
that made her feel so. Her dead children had not 
come as they generally did, as if they were alive and 
happy ; but they had come in such a way as to make 
her feel as if she was going to have a grief. She 
said she saw two of her dead children, George and 
Edward, and both came to her in coffins, standing 
against the wall, with their lids hanging down, expos- 
ing their dead faces. 

They did not' look happy and natural, as these 
specters usually did, but represented themselves as 
corpses, — eyes closed, motionless, and dead. That 
was not all : for there were three coffins in a row, — 
George in one, Edward in the other ; and then Bar- 
ney was in a coffin, too, his standing in the middle ; 
"and Barney is alive, and I am afraid," said she, 
"that something is going to happen." She evidently 
felt that Barney, who was then living in New Orleans, 
was going to die. This was forty years ago before 
there was any railroad there, and no telegraph, 

How distinctly I remember the following incident, 
about two weeks after the date of this vision of the 
three coffins. We were all sitting in the parlor of 
our two-story house, in Roxbury, when we heard the 
garden-gate open, and she said : " Oh ! it is a letter 
coming, and I do n't want to see it." And she went 
up stairs. In a second or two the door-bell was rung, 
and a letter left by the post-boy, with a black seal 
on it. It was written by a friend of Barney's, inform- 
ing us of his sudden sickness and death. 



152 SHADOWS. 

It seems to me the symbol of the coffins, as I have 
described them, .was a very intelligent and expressive 
one. Could any communication be more expressive 
of the fact than this was, — the open coffins of three 
of her children, showing three dead faces? Could 
there be any mistake in what was meant or intended? 
If a voice had said, or if George and Edward had 
said, " Barney has just died," would the fact have 
been more distinctly or intelligently conveyed than 
was this mute way of symbolizing the fact? 

Is there any royal road or occult way of getting 
information? Here was an occurrence twelve days 
before it was possible, in that day, to have been 
known by us. Everybody is liable to die, but Bar- 
ney no more than anybody else. He was not sick, 
and only about thirty-five or forty years old. I am 
aware there are sometimes premonitions; so there 
are dreams sometimes that have an intelligent method 
in them, that in some inscrutable way are pre-visions 
of coming events, casting, as it were, their shadows 
before. 

If there are divinities shaping human ends, which 
in most peoples' minds is simply a poetic fancy; but 
if it be a reality, as modern Spiritualism teaches, — 
that we live in two worlds, but cognizant of but 
one, — then this vision, which I have related at 
length, becomes an intelligent act on the part of the 
angel world. Can it be anything else ? 

I like the closing words of an able agnostic minis- 
ter of a discourse on immortality, which are these : 
" Though I do find this life sweet, I do want another ; 



SEEESHIP OK CLAIRVOYANCE. 153 

and though I cannot go as far as some and say this 
life is not worth having if there be no other, I do 
say dust and ashes seem a somewhat poor and impo- 
tent conclusion for such a magnificent, grand, terri- 
ble life drama as that we are playing here on this old 
earth, — 

* I cannot think it all shall end in naught ; 
That the abyss shall be the grave of thought. 
That e'er oblivion's shoreless sea shall roll 
O'er love and wonder and the lifeless soul.' " 



XIV. 

SUBJECTIVE APPARITIONS. 

A visit of consolation where the consoler got consoled. 

There seems to be a power in the soul or spirit of 
man which at times projects itself, or its visible per- 
sonality, and shows itself at a great distance, and, it 
would seem instantly, no matter whether the dis- 
tance be one mile or ten thousand miles. This most 
generally occurs just at the point of death. Instances 
of this fact are numerous. Most of these appear- 
ances, as I have said, occur just at the moment of 
death, as if that event was the fulcrum necessary to 
produce it; but instances are not rare when these 
appearances have occurred at other periods in a per- 
son's life. 

These subjective forms look exactly as the person 
did, — a natural, human-appearing person, leading 
the seer to think, or say: "How did he get here 
when I supposed he was so far off?" and then to 
find it only a seeming or a fancy, when, sooner or 
later, we hear of the person's death, and it generally 
proves to have been at the moment of the appearing. 
It would seem to be a sort of soul appearing to soul, 

154 



SUBJECTIVE APPARITIONS. 155 

and shows by the manifestation that there is a spirit- 
ual man as well as a physical man that can exist 
separately, or the fact of a man's spirit existing dis- 
tinct from his body. 

I do not think it argues against this deduction by 
saying it occurs only at the moment of death, which 
is not the fact, as I have said. I could state an 
instance in my own experience if it were worth the 
while to do so. To me, the appearance of the per- 
son at death seems to be as if intelligently informing 
the beholder of his final departure. 

I was well acquainted with our late citizen, Col. 
Wm. B. Green, the author of the " Blazing Star," 
well known among us as a theoretical labor-reformer 
and philanthropist during the last few years of his 
life. I saw him quite often ; he was not a Spiritual- 
ist, but was very hospitable to the idea. His daugh- 
ter, a fair-haired maiden of about twenty, was 
drowned off the coast of France, being one of the 
passengers of a steamer that was there lost. She 
had left this country a few weeks before. I think 
this was on her voyage out, but it may not have 
been, as I am writing from memory. 

When the news came of the loss of the steamer, 
and of her loss, I took an early opportunity of calling 
upon Col. Green from sympathy and respect, and 
found him much better prepared to meet his grief 
than I expected, which was explained when he told 
me he had the announcement of her departure from 
earth a few days or a week before, though hoping 
otherwise, that the information in advance of earthly 



156 SHADOWS. 

information was an illusion. When the news was 
cabled of the loss of the steamer, and she among the 
lost, he then felt it was all right, for he had seen her 
since the event, and he related to me the following 
circumstance : — 

In the night he awoke, or was awake, and saw, to 
his surprise and wonder, his daughter. She was 
clothed in white, as if wearing a wedding-garment 
(it was his expression), with a bright smile of happi- 
ness on her face, and pointing upwards. She dis- 
appeared, apparently, out of the room into the next 
chamber, where his wife, her mother, was sleeping, 
and she, it seemed, saw the same vision, — that is, 
the daughter was seen by both father and mother. 
Col. Green said it was no dream, for he was wide 
awake. This call, on my part, was intended to be 
one of a consoling character. I knew the loss he had 
met with, and. expected, or at least hoped, to have 
given him, from some of my experience in post- 
mortem matters, some consolation. I knew that he 
respected me, and knew of my belief, for we had 
talked together on the subject, and that anything I 
said would be both honest and from my heart. 

As I said, he needed no consolation. He was 
happy, felt that it was all right, and he looked as 
rationally on her departure from earth as he did 
when she left home on her philanthropic mission to 
Europe (it was some charitable undertaking that she 
became interested in, I think, of a Catholic charac- 
ter). Mr. Green's glowing account of this interest- 



SUBJECTIVE APPARITIONS. 157 

ing circumstance made him my consoler instead of 
my consoling him. 

This is not my experience, but the experience of 
my friend, as he related it to me, and I know he was 
truthful ; so I tell the story. With my experience 
in these things, I remember how I was lifted up 
both in my knowledge and faith by the joy he mani- 
fested at having such an angelic visit. 

I will now relate a circumstance of a cognate char- 
acter from my own experience. This was many years 
ago, but it made a vivid impression on me at the 
time, and has never been forgotten. I relate the cir- 
cumstance not so much for itself as for its connection 
with later events, down even to the present time. 

My mother had a favorite sister, Emeline ; she was 
my aunt, and was one of the most loveable young 
women that ever lived. We, mj^self and two sisters, 
loved her like a mother, and she loved and cared for 
us. In early womanhood, she gradually went into a 
decline with consumption, and, after failing away for 
many months, she passed to the higher life. Of 
course, with that disease, death was expected. It 
was only a question of time ; it might be months, 
and it might be a year or two. She had changed 
from a rosy-cheek young woman to a pale and ema- 
ciated one, but her interest in us, and her loveable- 
ness, were permanent and enduring. 

One evening, seated by the table, mother busy 
sewing, and I getting my school-lesson ; my two sis- 
ters, near the same age, and a year or two younger 
than I was, were asleep in the curtained bed at the 



158 SHADOWS. 

other end of the room. Sarah, the older of the 
two, and the special favorite of Emeline, suddenly 
screeched out as if in distress, and mother ran to the 
bedside to see what was the matter. Sarah, agitated 
and frightened, said: u Aunt Emeline just pulled aside 
the curtain and looked right at me, and she smiled 
and nodded as she did so ; she looked so lean and 
death-like that I am frightened." " Oh," said mother, 
"go right to sleep, you were only dreaming; nobody 
has been into the room. John and I have been sit- 
ting here all the time, and poor, sick Emeline has 
not been off her bed for a month " (she was occupj^- 
ing the chamber under ours). " No, mother," said 
Sarah, "I was not asleep, had not been asleep, and 
had heard you and John talking, so it was really 
Emeline her own self, for I saw her ; do n't I know 
aunt Emeline? I saw her with my eyes just as 
plainly as I am now seeing you, and she looked right 
into my face." As Sarah said this, our grandmother 
came into the room, weeping, and said : " Emeline 
has gone ; she has just died." 

This appearance was a reality to Sarah, and from 
the circumstance of just having died, or had left her 
body lying on the bed in,the room, it was an intelli- 
gent notice, by her appearance to her little pet, that 
she had died, and had stopped a minute in her depart- 
ure to say, in that mute way, good-bye. She thought 
everything of her little Sarah ; they were as much 
attached as if they were mother and child. 

I have sometimes wondered why this spirit, for it 
must have been a spirit (as her body had not moved) 



SUBJECTIVE APPARITIONS. 159 

should appear so lean and pale and deathly, the pict- 
ure of her bodily form, for the spirit had not died, 
or had a consumption ; but, then, if she did not 
appear as she was then known, she might not have 
been recognized. I prefer, however, to think, and have 
good reason to, as these " Shadows " in their whole- 
ness will show, that spirits in the " land of light and 
beauty" are free from their physical imperfections 
and disabilities, and so to leave such an impression, 
as it rests in my own mind, I will add the following 
fancy verse : — 

" A ghost ! by my cavern it darted f 

In moonbeams the spirit was drest, — 
For lovely appear the departed 
When they visit the dreams of my rest ! " 



XV. 

emeline's apparition. 

Other "white ladies" besides the one of Avenel, related 
by Sir Walter Scott. 

Emeline, of whom I have spoken in the preceding 
chapter, died over fifty years ago, when my two sis- 
ters and I were children. Since I have been a Spirit- 
ualist, which dates from the year 1857, I have had 
many proofs of her continued existence, and her inter- 
est in my family or tribe, so to speak. I have some- 
times thought of her as the " white lady," referring 
to " The white lady of Avenel," in Sir Walter Scott's 
novel of the " Monastery." 

I cannot say her influence or presence has been 
significant of trouble or death, as the novelist's * c white 
lady" was; yet it has often been so, and a very vivid 
impression of her presence would make me a little 
uneasy now, and yet she has, more than once, shown 
an interest and a marked supervision for our good, 
and so remarkable that I count them, or at least one 
of them among my best experiences ; yet, as I have 
said, when I feel certain of her contiguity, I am apt 
to think that something is going to happen our family 
or tribal interest. ( i6o> 



emeline's apparition. 161 

On a certain Monday evening not very long ago (it 
was in the spring of 1883, 1 see by an article of mine, 
which is now in print before me), I seated myself at 
the writing table in my library for a few hours' work 
that I had been putting off, and then I felt that it 
must be attended to. A restless feeling came over 
nie, and the image of Aunt Emeline came strangely 
into my mind. Such accidental images or thoughts 
are of no special importance, unless they are persist- 
ent and will not depart at the wishing. When an 
image or presence of a spirit "sticks," using Charles 
Sumner's expressive word, I have learned to consider 
it an indication of such a spirit, and, of course, for a 
purpose ; but for what purpose ? There is the rub. 

I hardly feel like enlarging on this point. The 
reader, I trust, will conclude from the character of 
these " Shadows " that I think I know what I am talk- 
ing about ; if not, as I have said before, he or she 
must skip me. " Barkis is willinV 

My sister's husband, Albert ,a very dear Mend 

of mine, and one of the best men that ever lived, 
came into my mind with this imaginary presence of 
Aunt Emeline. I know of no reason why they should 
have been thus associated, only I state the fact, and 
their persistency in my mind disturbed me in my 
work, and I gave it up. I found the conditions were 
not right, and yet, as many know, I am one who can 
make his own conditions. When I found that these 
thoughts of Emeline and Albert were " holding the 
fort," and the work I was doing was not, I gave up 
to it and cogitated. It would be tedious to write the 



162 SHADOWS. 

details and explain the adroitness of circumstances 
and coincidences that mixed the two names together, 
— the image of the spirit and the image of the mor- 
tal, — so I will not attempt it. I have been a student 
or close observer of these "phantoms of the brain" 
for a long while, and I know I am not deluded in my 
conclusions of the fact; the purpose is what bothers 
me. 

Albert was a man in poor health, and had been for 
years. For many years he had great pain in his head 
from a diseased ear ; and having, myself, a catarrh, 
which might be of a similar character, and that also 
of long standing but no pain, seemed to be a pointer 
to the circumstance. Albert had been urging me for 
a long time to attend to it so as not to suffer as he 
had, but I had not felt the necessity of it. I could 
see no other unit of measure to explain this mental 
association of the two but this common auricular 
trouble. I began to consider it a gentle warning, and 
mentally concluded at an early moment to attend to 
it. The presence, if it were one, and the associations 
having thus monopolized my time, the evening's work 
was postponed. I was not in the mood to attend to 
it or anything else, owing to these unexpected and 
weird thoughts. 

The next morning (Tuesday) among my letters I 
found one from my sister in Rhode Island, dated the 
day before, saying Albert, her husband, had just died. 
It took me by surprise, for I knew that he was out 
attending to business a day or two before. This 
explained the presence of this " white lady" and her 



emeline's apparition. 163 

connection with Albert, which I had associated with 
a common ear trouble, but it seems to me it was a 
"phantoinatic whisper,'* the best it could do to impress 
me of my friend's death and, perhaps, presence also. 

On my way home that afternoon I stopped at a 
spiritual meeting a few minutes. A medium on the 
platform was giving tests to the audience. They 
generally do not amount to much, are given, it seems 
to me, as an advertisement, so I was not interested 
in them, and was reading a newspaper instead ; but as 
I sat thus at the end of the hall, this medium said: 
14 1 hear the name of Albert, — yes, Albert is here. 
He seems to be attracted here by some friend of his.'' 
I felt from the first that it was my Albert, who had 
so lately died, and the name was for me, but I said 
nothing. 

The medium then said: " It is for some one in that 
direction," pointing towards me. I said : " Has he 
been in the spirit world some time?" "No," said 
the controlling spirit, "he has just come over. It is 
for you, sir," addressing me, "he seems glad that you 
recognize him. He says, 'John, I begin to under- 
stand these things better than I did. You know I 
did not believe as much as you did, but I see it now 
as you do.'" Then the control continuing, said, 
" John, I have no pain now, no pains in my head : 
none of those noises that I used to tell you of." This 
was substantially what he said, and I wrote it down 
at the time. It certainly was remarkably applicable. 

It was a simple name, — Albert; that might have 
been a guess, but when was added the exact views 



164 SHADOWS. 

he had of Spiritualism, it made two good guesses, and 
then he spoke of his head and pain and noises, of 
which he and I had had many talks in life. This takes 
the matter wholly out of guess-work and satisfies me, 
and would anyone with like experience, that it was 
my friend Albert, and that the Monday night " phan- 
toms of the brain" were real presences also. I was 
wholly unacquainted with this medium, still I may 
have been known to him, probably was. I am sure 
nobody there knew that I had lost an Albert, and I 
do not think anyone knew that I had such a relative, 
as he had never been among the Spiritualists, and 
lived in another State. 

1 will now relate an experience which shows an 
actual supervision by a spirit over a mortal in the form. 

Sometimes spiritual supervision is so definite as to 
be unmistakable of itself, so self-evidently true that 
it cannot be coincidence or imagination ; its definite- 
ness forbids it. Such visits certainly are like the 
fabled angels' visits, few and far between. The only 
drawback to such a case being a literal fact in any- 
one's mind is their unfrequency, and perhaps the 
special matter not always being of importance enough 
to call for angelic supervision. 

If the importance is the factor in such cases, then 
life is full of demands that call for aid and super- 
vision in vain, so there must be exoteric conditions 
of which we know nothing, or the supervising defini- 
tion of what is considered of importance is different 
from ours. Here is an experience of a supervising 
intelligence, which is quite remarkable, and from the 



emeline's apparition. 165 

nature of the case could not have been accidental. 
It will be an interesting account in itself, as well as 
an illustration to the principal feature or point in 
this chapter. 

My sister's daughter, or niece of mine, whom in 
this sketch I will call Mary, was making us a visit. 
She was a young lady of about sixteen, very inter- 
esting and well educated. From something I had 
said, she spoke of some "spiritual manifestations," 
and on what had occurred at her school on a certain 
occasion, which made me say : u Mary, you must be 
a medium." "No, I guess not, uncle," she said, as if 
the appellation was not complimentary, she not hav- 
ing had any experience with Spiritualists or Spirit- 
ualism, and had the usual social prejudices. 

I said to her: u Come and sit at the table with me." 
She did so ; but there being no raps or tipping, after 
a little while I said to her: " Hold this pencil in your 
hand," offering her one, and laying some sheets of 
paper on the table, she holding the pencil as if she 
was going to write. Her hand was still for a little 
while, then began a slight motion, which grew very 
rapid, so that the pencil end made a lot of dots, but 
no writing. "Is not this strange, uncle?" said she; 
"see how my hand jumps; I cannot help it; 1 do not 
do it; it does it itself;" which was very evident. 

After a little while the pencil began to write, and 
very rapidly filled the page, which I took up, and 
she, without stopping, began to fill another, and so 
on, filling four pages, signing the last one "Emeline 
Clap." I was very much interested both in the fact 



1GG SHADOWS. 

and the contents, as I read the communications as 
she wrote them, as I took up the sheets one after 
another. The young lady knew nothing of the con- 
tents of the communication, as the reader will here- 
after see from the nature of it ; and she kept saying 
while she was writing : " Is not this strange, uncle, 
that my hand is writing so, and I don't do it?" 
When she had finished, the pencil flew out of her 
hands with a jerk, and I said to her: "Do you know 
who Emeline Clap is?" "No," said she; "but do n't 
you know, as the name is Clap?" (our ancestral 
name). I said to her very impressively, as I was 
rather astonished at the contents: "She is your moth- 
er's and my aunt, who died long before you were 
born, and when your mother was a little girl. Hold- 
ing the sheets in my hand, I then read the message 
aloud. Here is a copy: — 

" My dear Mary, I have come to warn you, and to give 
you good advice. The course you are pursuing is wrong. 
You are having you think a pleasant time ; but you are 
doing yourself an injury, and are injuring Mr. Chick. He 
is nothing to you, and never will be. He in time will return 
home, and forget you ; and in the course of time you will be 
married, but not to Mr. Chick. Owing to the time and 
thought he devotes to you, he is not making the progress 
that he otherwise would ; and you are hurting yourself, and 
would grieve your parents if they knew you were thus inter- 
ested. Now, Mary, go to your mother, and make her your 
confidant, or stop just where you are. I take this unex- 
pected way of reaching you, through the eyes of your uncle, 
for your good. I am Emeline Clap." 



emelixe's apparition. 167 

When 1 read this letter to my niece, who had writ- 
ten it without knowing what she had written, she 
listened to it. somewhat dazed at the unexpected reve- 
lations of the contents, they being the secrets of her 
own heart, unknown to others. It seems the matter 
was a pleasant flirtation, — a sweet secret between 
two hearts, for the time being beating as one, and no 
eye watching them. There was an eye it seems, but 
it was invisible. It was not God's, but it saw in the 
night as well as in the day. It was the eye of a super- 
vising or guardian spirit. 

It was evident from the circumstances that she, 
though its amanuensis, was so interested in the man- 
ner of its production that she was wholly ignorant 
of what she had written, or the message would not 
have found a passage through from the land of light 
and beauty to the eyes of this shadowy writer. 

I did not realize myself that the message, so defin- 
itely stated, was founded on fact. Noticing the young 
lady's embarrassment, I said: "Is there anything 
to this, Mary? Is there a Mr. Chick?" "Yes," 
said she, "he is a fine young man, I think everything 
of him." "Well," said I, "who is he?" She said: 
" He is a sophomore." It is hardly necessary to write 
on this point further; it tells its own story. I will 
add here that my niece lived in Providence, and in 
the neighborhood of Brown University. 

I had never heard of Mr. Chick ; the message to 
me was a revelation. I was as certain as day that 
Mary was not the author of the communication. 
What can it be then in the nature of things but what 



168 SHADOWS. 

it purports to be ? Emeline Clap, — whose body had 
been dead and buried a score or two of years, but 
whose spirit was alive and moving among the dear 
ones of earth, an interested observer, stepping into 
the current affairs of life and setting right, so to speak, 
a misplaced switch that possibly might have led to 
disaster. This interposition was effectual, the source 
of it more potent, perhaps, in working the cure than 
any earthly advice would have been. 

I would like to understand this matter as anyone 
else would. I know where it is from as certain as I 
know where sunlight is from ; but the why ? Why 
this manifest interposition in this instance and not in 
the thousand other cases of as much and perhaps of 
more moment, that seem to have no supervising, 
viewless aunts ? In this case was it accidental, the 
" Gates Ajar " of both worlds coincidently ? It is of 
no use to speculate. There is the fact as it is and 
the circumstances, and seems to me it is clearly an 
intelligent spirit interposition. This, with more or 
less definiteness, seems to warrant me in feeling, as I 
have before said, that this " radiant maiden " who 
appeared to my sister at her earthly life's exit is the 
" white lady " of our house. May her shadow never 
be less, even if mine is ; and now as a finish and a 
finis to this sketch, I will add the following anony- 
mous lines, after thus proving them, I think, to be 
literally true: — 

" The living are the only dead ; 

The dead live never more to die; 
And often when we think them fled, 
They never were so nigh." 



XVI. 

IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 
The Sage of Gralveston returns according to promise. 

The positive identification of a spirit is one of the 
things seldom accomplished even by those who think 
they are getting tests. One of the prominent con- 
versions to modern Spiritualism was made through, 
perhaps, an innocent deception on the part of a spirit, 
if deception, in any sense, can be innocent. 

The fact was this : the spirit of a brother, who 
lived and died in Europe, manifested through a 
medium to his sister, who was visiting this country, 
giving his name and some family circumstances 
wholly unknown to anyone here, — not even known 
that she had a brother. It was an agreeable sur- 
prise, and was the means of making a Spiritualist of 
her, and a very prominent one. Later in her experi- 
ence she learned directly that the spirit of her brother 
had never communicated, and that the spirit con- 
trolling the medium had read her mind, and fed her 
with what would be very naturally considered tests. 
They were tests of spirits, but not tests of identifica- 
tion. Good was done by even this deception. A 



170 SHADOWS. 

valuable convert was made to the cause, and she is 
now one of the conspicuous speakers on its platform. 
I merely mention this to show how difficult it is to 
get unmistakable identifications, not to justify or 
qualify any deceptions, no matter the motive. I have 
had a few, as the reader of these " Shadows" will 
have seen, but not many that are unquestionable. I 
do not think identification of spirits the important 
thing in modern Spiritualism. It is very easy to get 
positive manifestations of spirits, and the fact that 
any spirit of a departed human being can come, good 
or bad, settles the fact, law, or principle ; and if one 
spirit survives the death of his body, the law holds 
good for all. 

I think it better that identifications should be 
difficult and seldom, otherwise we would depend too 
much upon the departed for aid and counsel, which 
would certainly retard human progress. I think no 
one who is zealously and honestly seeking for truth 
in this direction but will find now and then an iden- 
tification of a spirit, but not often enough to make 
him perfectly happy, but often enough for his human 
good. That identifications are possible is an unmis- 
takable fact. I think I will not enlarge upon the 
subject further in this chapter, the rationale of the 
matter not now being my principal object ; but, with 
what I have said, I will .relate a remarkable case of 
identification, where my friend, the "Sage of Gal- 
veston," as I used to familiarly call him, returned to 
me, according to promise, unmistakably. 

I wrote an account of it, and printed it at the 



IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 171 

time. The statement seems to express all the points 
very clearly, so I will now print that instead of 
rewriting it, and, perhaps, condensing it. It was 
written as a fugitive article, and not with as much 
literary care as I would have done if intended for 
book-form, but I trust any superfluous rhetoric will 
not be a blemish. It was necessary to be very par- 
ticular and minute on the points in order to have the 
whole matter understood. I consider the circum- 
stance a very important one, and worthy of careful 
perusal. The article referred to is as follows : — 

"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray- 
Had in her sober livery all things clad." 

Such was the fact to the world and to me on the 
closing in of a pleasantly and busily occupied Sunday 
in May (this was in the year 1881). I had laid 
down my pen, and folded my notes and papers, and, 
seeing a copy of " Paradise Lost " handy on the 
table, I laid the book on them to keep them intact 
during my absence, which was to attend a circle. 
The book in question may have invited the draft of 
the above quotation to begin with, or the man behind 
the book ; it is difficult to tell the exact factors of 
inspiration, and I do not know, in this connection, as 
it is of any consequence. 

After a pleasant and somewhat thoughtful walk of 
about half an hour, in which I took no note of time, 
not even of its loss, I found myself at the medium's 
door. This was Miss Shelhamer's home-circle even- 
ing, not for visitors, except on invitation, and I was 



172 SHADOWS. 

one of the privileged. It proved, indeed, a privilege, 
and enables me to corroborate the return of a friend 
whose name heads this article, and to say, also, it is 
one of the most perfect identifications of an individ- 
ual spirit I ever had or ever heard of; and the cir- 
cumstances in connection forbid any such explanation 
as mind-reading, or unconscious cerebration, as is 
often suggested, at least by those who strain at a 
gnat, in the spiritual manifestations, and swallow 
camels in other matters. Such perfect tests of iden- 
tification as the one of which I am speaking are very 
rare, comparatively, among experiences, not as tests of 
spirits, but tests or proofs of identification, and, there- 
fore, it is worthy of elaborate record ; and that is my 
apology for the space I occupy. 

I do not know as it is wise or sensible to begin as 
I have in this somewhat poetical manner; but it 
expresses the state of my feelings, and, may be, an 
impression ; I do not say it is, but it reminds me of 
"Junius." Speaking of the eagle, he says: "The 
feather that adorns the royal bird sustains his flight ; 
strip him of his plumage, and you pin him to the 
earth." I trust, then, the "plumage" of this arti- 
cle, if there should be any, will be forgiven. How 
much my occupation during the day had to do with 
the sentimentality of the hour, or how much it had 
to do with the fact that made this occasion a privi- 
lege, I will not undertake to say. I think we some- 
times accidentally make conditions that are not 
always at our command on call ; that is my apology 
now for being so minute. 



IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 173 

The clay had been wholly spent in my study, — 
my books, papers, pigeon-hole contents, and corre- 
spondence around me, and, to some extent, in me ; 
it had been a sort of "washing-day" in my lit- 
erary life. Our thoughts, you know, have queer 
ways of reaching us; autographic suggestions not 
only carry memories with them, but they carry 
presences also. How much, then, of my day's 
thoughtful occupation had to do with the connection 
made with my Texan friend I do not know; per- 
haps my condition was not in any sense a factor ; but 
I feel impressed to begin in this way, and even to 
call to my aid, in the way, perhaps, of superfluous 
"plumage," the sweet, orphic lines of Emerson, in 
suggestion of connections that exist, that are not 
always prima facie, where the poet says : — 

" And on his mind at dawn of day- 
Soft shadows of the evening lay; 
For the prevision is allied 
Unto the thing so signified. 
Or say, the foresight that awaits 
Is the same genius that creates." 

Before giving the circumstances in connection with 
the communication that has inspired this article, I 
will first briefly speak of the man and his association 
with me, and our correspondential intimacy. 

J. S. Thrasher, whose initials were autographically 
and typographically and indelibly during my life im- 
pressed on my mind as L S. Thrasher, was a rare 
man, and, I think, had a toning influence on my 
style of expression. The initials of which I have 



174 SHADOWS. 

spoken are an important item in this statement, and 
I shall refer to them again when I reach the proper 
place. I always called Mr. Thrasher, in my corre- 
spondence, the " Sage of Galveston," beginning my 
letters : " My Dear Sage," and, in return, I suppose, 
he always began his letters to me : "My Dear Philos- 
opher." I became very much attached to him, and 
the attachment was mutual. 

It began in this way: Something I had written 
had attracted his attention, and he wrote to me inquir- 
ingly, and the reply opened a correspondence which 
has not ended, it now seems, with his life in the 
form. I have a box — it is now before me — of about 
a cubic foot in dimensions, full of his letters to me. 
There are more bright thoughts, wise words, good 
advice, and common sense in them than can be found 
in any package of letters that I know of with an 
equal number of words. Our pen-acquaintance began 
in 1874. My attachment to him was not because he 
appreciated my articles, for he was much more of a 
critic than a patron. I used to think oftener of what 
he would say, when I was writing an article, than 
what the reading public would say ; there was where 
he toned me up, and I have no doubt he is now say- 
ing: " Condense, John, condense," and I am going 
to after this ; but, for reasons already stated, I want 
the privilege of superfluity now, for I feel that I am 
writing on an important matter. 

The "Sage of Galveston," as I still like to call 
him, was a man of wide experience, and had led an 
active life, commercial, political, and literary. Some 






IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 175 

twenty odd years ago he was on the editorial staff of 
the New York Herald, occupying the position several 
years. He was born in New England, but left it 
when a young man. He lived at the South the latter 
part of his life, beginning his residence there before 
the late war ; and when he came across my pathway, 
as I have said, some six or seven years ago, he was 
and had been long a resident of Galveston. He 
was then a Spiritualist, had lost by death his wife 
and children, so his home, in the ordinary sense, was 
desolate. His aged mother lived with him, and she 
seemed to be the only connecting link with this life. 
He was singularly modest and retiring for so full a 
man, and was very happy in his belief in Spiritual- 
ism. He had very thoroughly investigated it, and, 
being satisfied, he stayed satisfied, living the life that 
Spiritualism teaches, at least teaches theoretically. 
I trust that some day, as our truth gets incorporated 
into humanity more generally, there will be more 
Thrashers living practical lives than now, so that it 
will be less of a theory and more of a life. 

The "Sage " had great practical common sense in 
Spiritualism, as in everything else. He seemed to 
know where he was going, when this life closed in, 
more intelligently than most men that I have met, 
and he has gone there ; and now tells me, as his 
"message" will show, that "he is quite comfort- 
able." How natural was that easy way of saying it ; 
so like him, as the general tenor of that box of letters 
will show. He put himself in the shape to take life 
easy. Having made up his mind, in his lonely 



176 SHADOWS. 

domestic state, that commerce and enterprise would 
allure him no more, or disturb his mind, he invested 
his available means in an annuity that supported him 
generously, so that he could live to his liking, and 
have something for charity, and be hospitable, as 
many travelling Spiritualists can testify. 

He often sent for mediums to visit him ; they 
became residents at his house for longer or shorter 
periods, and great was the comfort he took in the 
manifestations at his own home and elsewhere. Even 
the account of them gladdened my heart. His expe- 
riences and wise conclusions have helped the stability 
of my own sensuous experiences. I do not mean 
that I needed his evidences to indorse mine, but it is 
so pleasant to tind bright, scholarly, cultured minds 
in accord with one's own. He lived with the spirits ; 
he seemed to fully realize that he had invisible com- 
pany. As I have said, commerce and business, which 
once allured him, had no attractions for him, and, 
when he died, the competency he had died with him. 
I do not know as that was a wise investment, but I 
think it was wise for him. At any rate, when he 
died he was not weighted with the ballast of wealth 
that anchors so many spirits to earth after their 
bodies are dead and buried. It was, of course, a mis- 
fortune to have been left alone, death taking his 
family, but he felt always near them, and on many 
important occasions they were vividly manifest. 

He visited the East once a year during the last 
three years of his life, and we were much together 
during these three visits. When last here, in the 



IDENTIFICATION OF SPIBITS. 177 

summer of 1879, he spent a few months in the west- 
ern part of the State for his health, which was poor. 
He was then alone in the world, his aged mother 
having a few months before passed on, near four- 
score-and-ten, and he seemed ready to go himself, 
and felt, and so did I, that he was near the end of 
the road; and when I bade him good-bye in the fall 
of that year, as he left for the South, he said, as he 
had said many times before, "Au revoir" meaning 
that he would manifest at the earliest opportunity, 
and report how he found things. He has now done 
so, at least in a measure, and to me, who have his 
letters, that tally with the tenor of his message, the 
report is ample and satisfactory, and I am glad he 
has been, and is to be, near me ; I knew it before he 
said so. I am glad he proposes to communicate 
again, and perhaps continue, and thus, though the 
"river" divides us, we are not divided. 

In getting the " true inwardness " of this identifi- 
cation the reader must permit me to refer again to 
his initials. He signed his name on his two or three 
hundred letters as I. S.. Thrasher. Capital I's and J's 
in writing are often written alike, but in addressing 
his letters to me the J in John was a J, and came 
below the line, while the I or J in his signature did 
not, but was written exactly as he wrote the per- 
sonal pronoun I, and I always superscribed my let- 
ters to him I. S. Thrasher. After a pen-acquaintance 
of about a year, I noticed his name printed in a list of 
small contributions in a newspaper, "I. S. Thrasher, 
Galveston, $3.00," and I became as perfectly satisfied 



178 SHADOWS. 

that his initial letter was an I as I am that mine is a 
J. There was no occasion for settling the point, for 
in all our correspondence he spoke of me as the Phil- 
osopher, and I addressed him as the Sage : " My 
Dear Philosopher;" u My Dear Sage." The dis- 
covery that the initial letter was a J, as this article 
is headed, is due to the fact that the spirit knew his 
own name better than I did. 

I have written a pretty long introduction or episode, 
after leaving the reader at the door of Miss Shelha- 
mer's house on that Sunday evening in May; but the 
many words since written will enable me to be both 
brief and intelligent in finishing up the corroboration. 
I do not propose to present a record of that circle, 
only that which bears on this subject. In the course 
of the evening I had had an interesting and charac- 
teristic letter from the spirit of Ralph Huntington ; 
the control had also said that my daughter Hattie 
and sister Adeline, my brother, father and father-in- 
law were present ; therefore, I had six friends among 
the invisibles. The control afterwards said, address- 
ing me: "There is a spirit who comes to you and 
wants to be recognized; he died a good way off and 
many months ago." I said : " Who is he ? what is his 
name?" "I will see if I can get it," said the control; 
and after some hesitation said something that sounded 
like Frasher, and John or James; but as I knew no 
James, and no Frasher, I said: "Cannot some of my 
spirit friends tell me his name?" 

The spirit said he had tried hard to manifest, and 
had promised me that he would, and the control said 



IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 179 

he seemed disappointed and persevering. I said: 
"Tell the spirit to come to the Banner circle, and 
try to manifest there " ; and the control said he would 
if he could. A little while after this, "Lotela" con- 
trolled the medium. She is an Indian spirit of a 
lively turn of mind, and she said: " Wetherbee chief, 
that spirit that knows you is here still, and wants to 
be recognized." I said I wanted the recognition as 
much as he did, and I was sorry I was so stupid. She 
then said: "I see four large letters right over him 
and you — S-A-G E." "Oh," said I, "the ' Sage of 
Galveston,' my friend Thrasher. He died some months 
ago, and promised to manifest to me when he went 
over, if he could." 

The spirit was delighted to be thus recognized, 
and I still more so, — for it was so impossible for our 
acquaintance to have been known by the medium, 
and the cognomen of "Sage" was wholly correspond- 
ential and private. This was an extremely interest- 
ing affair to me ; but the climax was the message that 
came from him shortly after at the Banner circle. 

I went to the circle. I do not go often ; have not 
the time; was detained down town one afternoon to 
meet a friend late, and so went to the circle to pass 
the time, and the message published in the last Ban- 
ner of Light was given. Very few people — not more 
than one or two — in this city knew Mr. Thrasher, 
or of our close corresponclential relations, and I do not 
believe a living soul in the world knows that he was 
in the habit of addressing me as " My Dear Philos- 
opher," and that makes it a test. He refers to me, as 



180 SHADOWS. 

will be seen by his message, as his friend and philos- 
opher, and I can show over two hundred letters from 
him, beginning "My Dear Philosopher," or referring 
to me as his philosopher and friend, which is a feat- 
ure in that message. The general contents, also, are 
such as to be unmistakably his to anyone who knew 
the tenor of our intercourse. Above and beyond 
this internal evidence is what I shall hereafter say of 
his message which frees the communication from any 
suspicion of mind-reading on the part of the spirit 
that would have made him, possibly, an alias. 

Oh, how my heart died within me when he closed 
the message thus : " You may say it is from J. S. 
Thrasher, of Galveston, Texas, to his philosopher 
friend, John Wetherbee, of Boston." The J broke 
my heart. Everything else was perfect. I don't 
know what I would have given to have had that 
spoken an I, in giving his name, instead of a J. I 
felt and knew it came from my Galveston friend, but 
why spirits so often get twisted on some trifle that 
the man himself never would mistake if he were in 
the form, but a spirit often does, is one of the unac- 
countables. 

There was no mistaking the message and the cir- 
cumstances as being from my friend, the "Sage," but 
the J coming, intead of an I, led me into a careful 
investigation, and I spent three evenings carefully 
reading his letters, and, to my great joy, I found two 
of them out of the lot signed with a J. That settled 
all the other I's to be J's, and in one letter, where he 
was quoting something of mine, and putting his own 



IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS. 181 

version also, he put at the end of mine as author, J. 
W., and at the end of his, J. S. T. Before I had dis- 
covered the fact, I wrote South to a friend for infor- 
mation, and have received a reply that his initial 
letter was J, as his friend writes me in reply to mine, 
that his name was John S. Thrasher. So it seems 
the spirit was right, and I was wrong. If, on the 
evening that I spent at Miss Shelhamer's circle, I had 
known this — that his initial letter was a J — I would 
probably have made my connection with him more 
readily ; and when the spirit was saying John and 
James, and approximating to a Thrasher by saying 
Frasher, I would not have had to wait for the " Sage" 
suggestion before I recognized him ; but in the end 
it was all for the best. 

I may not have succeeded in making this as clear 
as I could wish, as there is so much esoteric in its 
nature not convertible into exoteric without an 
unwarranted elaboration, but to me it covers the 
whole ground, and I must ask the reader to take the 
unspoken and unspeakable minutiae on my say-so, 
and believe my ipse dixit when I say it is conclusive. 



XVII. 

UNKNOWN QUANTITIES. 

Prime factors. — Philosophical musings on human 
happiness. 

Modern Spiritualism, teaching as it does great 
duration to human existence, even conscious person- 
ality in perpetuity, it should teach us also how to 
insure the best conditions for such an existance, 
having an eye to happiness. As " one man's meat " 
— so the proverb says — "is another man's poison," 
so, in a sense, one man's happiness may be another 
man's misery. So I do not propose to write an essay 
on happiness, or on the conditions to insure it ; but, 
being in a musing frame of mind, I will jot down a 
few thoughts that the subject seems to suggest. 

I have had my happy hours and my sad hours. I 
suppose most everyone can say the same, but that 
need not hinder my saying it. Considering that my 
health through life has been remarkably good, I 
ought to score it on the side of happiness as a whole, 
and so I do. Human happiness, it seems to me, is 
mainly a constitutional quality. " Men," says Emer- 
son, " are what their mothers made them ; " that is, 

182 



UNKNOWN QUANTITIES. 183 

when a man is born the gate of gifts is closed. Pine 
may harden with care, or outward application, but it 
never can become oak, nor the latter, by any process, 
become pine. There is the same inherent differences 
in human nature. We can grow advantageously or 
disadvantageously by conditions, more or less at our 
command, but pine is always pine, and oak oak. 

I know of a family of four children ; they are 
adults or dead now; but, with my ideas, they are 
living, two in the form, and two as spirits ; but I will 
use all four as an illustration, as I know them well, 
and they seem to fit my case. The oldest was born 
of a happy mother, whose years of grief had not 
arrived, and he manifested cheerfulness all his days, 
even under adverse circumstances. Misfortune came 
upon this family, and the second child, gestating 
under home sadness, was sad and pensive all her 
life ; very fascinating, but soberly beautiful even in 
her adolescent years, she was not a diffuser of joy or 
sunshine, but was the product of her mothers con- 
dition. 

The sun came out of the cloud again in that fam- 
ily, and the home was radient with light and joy, 
and the third child, born in that sunshine, was 
sparkling and bright, a joy in the house all her days, 
shedding happiness wherever she went. Then came 
trouble and misfortune to that family, and a broken 
household, and the fourth baby was a child of grief 
all his days. There were rises and falls in their sev- 
eral thermometers of happiness, but the tenor of their 
lives show correctly their ante-natal conditions. They 



184 SHADOWS. 

all lived until at least the high noon of adult life, and 
two of them, as we have said, are still in the form, 
as elderly people. This episode will explain, with- 
out a long dissertation, what I mean when I say 
human happiness is more of a constitutional than an 
acquired quality. 

With the foregoing remarks as an introduction, I 
will go on and say it takes a combination of quali- 
ties to make happiness, — we might say qualities 
innumerable. They can, however, be reduced to a 
few. We will call them " prime factors." People 
are very differently constituted ; one often wanting 
what another possesses ; but, we think, no one would 
make an entire change with another, our personality 
has such a perpetual interest in our being. We will 
let the poet express our thought instead of doing it 
ourselves, by quoting from Pope : — 

" Whate'er'the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf, 
No one will change his neighbor with himself. 
The learned is happy nature to explore ; 
The fool is happy that he knows no more ; 
The rich is happy in the plenty given ; 
The poor contents him with the care of heaven." 

This quotation is poetry, but I do not indorse it as 
even approximately true, but it is suggestive of truth. 
While none are perfectly happy, and, of course, 
some are happier than others, we think it would be 
found, if there was any way of finding it out, that 
happiness is more equally divided than anything 
else in the distribution of gifts in human life ; cer- 
tainly more than in the great essentials, — such as 



UNKNOWN QUANTITIES. 185 

health, wealth, genius, or position. It will be a 
rather arbitrary supposition ; but suppose we fix the 
number of "prime factors" of human happiness at 
ten. This, however, is no more arbitrary than the 
use of x for an unknown quantity, though I hardty 
expect to find its value, like a sum in algebra, for 
human nature is not a branch of mathematics as yet. 
Though fixing the "prime factors " of human hap- 
piness at ten and definite, they necessarily blend, 
run into each other, like the primary colors of a ray 
of light. Disintegrated by the prism, these " prime 
factors," just like colors, are often, and, necessarily, 
complementary. The solar spectrum is a good analo- 
gous illustration of our point, human happiness 
being the ray of white light. Apply the mental 
prism to the ray of happiness, and the rainbow of life 
stratifies into the supposed ten primaries, or "prime 
factors ; " or that is our scale or spectrum, for the 
sake of lucidity, perhaps, as we have said, somewhat 
arbitrary. We would designate them thus : — 

1. Goodness. 6. Contentment. 

2. Health. 7. Success. 

3. Hope. 8. Popularity. 

4. Home. 9. Social Position. 

5. Industry. 10. Wealth. 

Perhaps a little consecutive elaboration may be of 
advantage here. What we mean by 

Groodness, not religion, for a man may be religious 
without being good; not virtue, but it includes that. 
It means living for others as well as for one's self. 



186 SHADOWS. 

Many of the other factors of happiness are born of 
this one. 

Health. — Parent of virtue. Without it all the 
ten spokes of the wheel of happiness rattle in their 
revolution. While one man with many gifts is lower 
in the scale of happiness, and another, with the same 
or less, is higher, the fact is due often to one's health. 
A man can afford to be marked low on many of the 
factors of happiness if health can be marked high 
thereby. 

Hope is one of the great essentials of happiness. 
Hope without success (material or otherwise) is bet- 
ter than success without hope, — just as a rich poor 
man is happier than a poor rich man. Cheerfulness 
is one of the children of hope. Too much hope leads 
often to disappointment; but there is the compensa- 
tion ; it saves a soul from despair, and hides a multi- 
tude of sorrows. A man had better lose everything 
than hope. 

"Home, sweet home, there is no place like home ! " 
when goodness, cheerfulness, and harmony abound. 
Blessed are they who have it. Money, popularity, or 
position is no substitute for it. 

Industry. — Occupation, something to do, a disin- 
clination to be idle. If success in the pursuits of 
life leads to rest or idleness, better remain poor and 
industrious, or die. Most men require the stimulus 
of active business or trade to keep them employed. 
With success they would be without occupation ; an 
afternoon of rest is a life of unhappiness. It is bet- 
ter to be on a tread-mill than to rust. 



UNKNOWN QUANTITIES. 187 

Contentment is better than wealth. It is a consti- 
tutional rather than an acquired quality. To be 
satisfied is great gain. Happy are they who can look 
out of humble homes and cheap joys on palaces and 
equipage, and heave no sighs. 

Success. — This word has no necessary relation to 
money or trade in this connection. A man may be 
a success without being a millionaire. Henry D. 
Thoreau was a success, though he died poor ; so was 
Publicola; but Croesus was not, nor many modern 
ones that could be named, though they had wealth. 
Who would not prefer to be Agassiz, without wealth, 
than Jim Fisk with ? 

Popularity. — Most people like to stand well with 
their fellows. Few are indifferent to approbation. 
One of the accented motives for gaining wealth is to 
impress others ; to be in their eyes of some conse- 
quence. The popularity born of goodness and cheer- 
fulness is more to be desired than that born of wealth. 
The former has a heavenly flavor, the latter an 
earthly one. 

Social Position. — "A man's a man for a' that, 
and a' that." Worth makes the man, and not posi- 
tion. Still, hereditary competency, the refinements 
and comforts of genteel (not snobbish) life, are by 
no means small matters to be born into, or grow 
into. Patrician and plebeian have a recognized dis- 
tinction : money will not buy the one, or the want of 
it impose the other. 

Wealth is the grandest servant in life to a wise 
man. It is often a hard master, and keeps one 



188 SHADOWS. 

awake nights. The ninety out of the hundred have 
to be happy without it ; the ten who have it are not 
always happy thereby. The problem is solved that 
the most happiness, as far as this factor is concerned, 
lies in the mean between poverty and wealth. Robert 
Burns hints at the true idea when he says : — 

" Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
Nor for a train attendant ; 
But for the glorious privilege 
Of being independent." 

It is my opinion, as the truth of modern Spiritual- 
ism becomes incorporated in the mind of mankind, 
in the same way as some of the other laws of nature 
have, — not looking forward to a future life simply as 
a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of fact, — it 
will lead to a fairer distribution of what are called 
the essentials in this life ; mankind will tend to lay up 
more enduring treasures than they do now, — those 
that they can carry with them into the land of souls. 
That certainly is the logic of the thought ; the prac- 
tical short-coming is the measure of a man's doubt 
or belief. 



XVIII. 

ALLEN" DOLE. 

A reliable family tradition that amounts almost to a 
personal experience. 

The following incident may be of interest enough 
to relate; at any rate it will not take long to do it. 
In my very early childhood there was an old relative 
of mine, whom I will call Allen Dole. I am not fully 
sure whether I remember him, or only think I do, 
having heard so much of him traditionally from the 
old members of our family. At any rate, he died 
when I was very young, and what I have to say of 
him would be traditional, whether I can recollect him, 
or whether the stories had been told so often that 
they had taken the form in me of experiences. It 
makes no difference, however, as what I am going to 
say is perfectly reliable, and told to me and spoken of 
before me, a'hd continued to be spoken of by several 
of the old familiar faces of those days, even until I 
had almost reached manhood, so I relate it with all 
the confidence I would if it were my own experience, 
or if I had been one of those old folks myself. 

As I have already written this circumstance out, 



190 SHADOWS. 

and printed it in an article on " Dormitory Thoughts" 
as one of the illustrations of the subject, I will copy 
it as therein written, instead of recomposing it. 
The article referred to is as follows : — 

" Who would have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun ! or who could find, 
While fly, and leaf, and insect are revealed, 
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ! 
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife ? 
If Light could thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?" 

Coleridge thought these lines the best in the Eng- 
lish language. They may be; that is a matter of 
taste ; but the thought conveyed in them is certainly 
both hopeful and suggestive, and so is a good intro- 
duction to what I have to say in this dormitory 
effort. 

I think it will not be a digression if I relate an 
incident that has always interested me, and is not 
irrational by the view I take of sleep-life in these 
articles. A relative of mine, whom I will call Allen 
Dole, who died quite an old man when I was a youth, 
had, during his adult life, periodical spells of inebria- 
tion lasting a day or two, then followed months of 
creditable sobriety. Except for this one failing he 
was a very estimable man. When this irresistible 
thirst came on he had to have his spree, if it could be 
called one, for he knew when it was coming on, and 
deliberately prepared for it, passing the dark season 
quietly all by himself in his own room; hence his 
weakness was not generally known to the outside 
world* 



ALLEN DOLE. 191 

On one occasion, coming among us after one of 
these retirements, he said he had had a very singular 
dream, which lasted a good while. " It was more 
than a dream," said he ; " there was something unusu- 
ally real about it." His brother knowing his habit, 
said: "Oh, you were only balmy, perhaps out of your 
head." Allen, finding a more hospitable disposition 
in the rest of us, related it, saying he felt then under 
its influence, as if he had just returned from a long 
journey. That was natural enough, we all thought, 
though we did not say so, but listened attentively to 
the narration of it, which was about as follows: — 

" A person of angelic appearance came and awoke 
me and said; 'Allen, I want you to go with me.' I 
did not feel much surprised, and prepared to go as a 
matter of course. I was rather attracted to this vis- 
itant from the land of souls. I say this from what 
followed. I found myself moving along with this 
messenger, — without any mechanical effort I seemed 
to be gliding along, as it were, in his company. This 
movement seemed to excite in me no surprise nor 
expectation. I paid no attention to any surround- 
ings; but as I call the vision now to my mind, I 
seemed to be in a misty or cloudy envelope, my com- 
panion, not my progress, being my attraction. 

"After moving along in this way for some time, the 
misty surroundings having grown into a more beau- 
tiful light, my companion said to me: 'Here we are, 
Allen.' I do n't know when our locomotion changed ; 
but at this time we were walking quickly over the 
soft, velvet-like, grassy turf, and it seemed to be now 



192 SHADOWS. 

the auroral splendor of a new and magnificent morn- 
ing, and all the landscape was in harmony with it. 
It seemed to be the most beautiful place I was ever 
in, and, while feasting my eyes on the natural attrac- 
tions of the locality, I found I was in the midst of a 
large gathering of very happy people. It seemed to 
be a festival. I felt and breathed pleasure in the 
happy atmosphere that environed me. I felt at home, 
— that is, I did not feel like a stranger, nor did these 
happy people seem to consider me one, or as a new 
comer. The situation, as I now think of it, seems 
strange to me, but it did not then. 

" One thing was very singular, but even that excited 
no surprise ; the faces of all these people were the 
faces of the departed, the vanished lights of human 
life, the still living forms of the loved and lost. Some 
of them had died before I was born ; but I knew who 
they were just as well as I did those who had been 
the remembered faces of by-gone days, and many of 
them were those whom I had followed to the grave; 
but they were all alive, as much so as I was then, 
myself. But what surprises me now is that, finding 
all these dead faces alive, it did not surprise me then. 
There was Lucinda (who had died about a year 
before), not the emaciated young woman that con- 
sumption had had so long in its grasp, but the picture 
of health and youthful activity. In the words of the 
poet : — 

"It did not seem irrational, or queer, 

To thus confabulate in common speech 
With this old friend who had been dead a year, — 

Strange things these dreams, and sometimes wisdom teach." 



ALLEN DOLE. 193 

"Not one of my living friends was there ; not one 
of you" (addressing us). "If I had met any living 
faces there, I do not think thej' would have seemed 
strange to me any more than it did to be there myself; 
but if I had, and remembered the fact now, as I do 
the vision, or dreamy experience, I should consider 
it ominous, or prophetic of dissolution. I would feel 
now that that person was soon to be called home." 

This is enough to relate of Allen's account. There 
were other details of no general interest, so I will 
only add that after Allen had been there what seemed 
quite a long time, his mother, who, with others, was 
very near him, said it was time to go ; but Allen was 
reluctant; said he preferred to stay. She said : " No, 
you must go now ; but in fifteen years you will come 
again, and then stay all the time, like the rest of us." 
I will add that Allen died in about fifteen years. It 
was always said by aunt Fales, whose memory was 
good on superstitious matters, that he died exactly 
fifteen years from the date of that vision. If that 
was the case, or even if only an approximation, there 
was prevision, as well as method, in the circumstances 
of that somewhat singular dream, which, as Allen 
said, was something more than a dream. 

I do not know as this traditional family incident 
has any general bearing on the subject of this book 
of "Shadows," unless to make it more in keeping 
with its title ; yet a matter — whether dream or 
vision — occurring near a century ago, and fifty years 
almost before the advent of modern Spiritualism, and 
giving a picture of the future life so different from the 



194 SHADOWS. 

notion prevalent at that time, and so in keeping with 
the teachings of modern Spiritualism, that it at least 
is a pointer, even if the prophetical part of it may 
have been a little strained. 

The circumstance so believed in by the old 
people of our house, who have long since passed 
beyond the vale, made quite an impression upon me, 
as one of the facts in my early life. I think, also, 
modern Spiritualism has somehow tended to keep the 
old familiar faces of by-gone days in more close 
remembrance than if I had believed that dead people 
were dead when they had " shuffled off the mortal 
coil." With some such ideas as I am expressing 
now, I put the foregoing incident into simple verse 
a long time ago, which I will add for the sake of 
making this chapter of a respectable length, although 
it is a repetition of what has been already told in the 
foregoing account : — 

Here in this churchyard's melancholy shade 
Sepulchral stones stand thickly planted round ; 

My wandering footsteps hitherward have strayed 
To read the names of tenants under ground. 

The clove there perched on yonder slab oblique, 
Swerved from its line by many a frosty year, 

Seems sensing sentiment it fain would speak, 
And accents well the thought to wanderers here. 

On that same slab was chiseled " Allen Dole ; " 
The year he died, his death also, and age : 

The grass was pulled aside to read the whole, 
But nothing found of his illumined page. 

That was not written on this old grave-stone, 
Where crawling iyy covers it from sight, 



ALLEN DOLE. 195 

Bat told in solemn words to me alone 
How Allen saw the world of spirits bright. 

Now day is closing for the coming night, 

And memories sad, like phantoms, come and go; 

The dove has flown ; the fire-flies show their light, 
With thoughts of people whom we used to know. 

With evening, shadows come of actions done 
In hours when sunlight leaves no passing trace ; 

But retrospection calls back one by one, 

And gives in sober thought to each its place. 

In dim forgetfulness, how apt to hide 

The selfishness that marks most all our acts ! 

But in this evening hour their shadows glide 
Unbidden to the mind, — the naked facts. 

But Allen flanked this thoughtful evening school : 

A glass of rum in him made evening day ; 
So all the morning hours he 'd play the fool, 

Driving reflection's warning voice away. 

But Allen's cares increased as time unrolled : 

His early life grew indistinct with years, 
And manhood's record blurred as he grew old, — 

He found the world at last a vale of tears. 

Then hearken well ! The hour will come to all, 
When time, so fleeting, whispers "sands are low ! " 

Few may forecast, and anxious wait the call, 
As Allen did, who, smiling, said " I go." 

But Allen grieved not as he neared fourscore, 

Though friends were few, and end of days so near; 

For he had been upon that other shore, 

And talked with angels in their happy spaere. 

Once Allen saw his body sound asleep ! 

Perhaps 't was rum that dualized his sight? 
He saw the angels who their vigils keep 

While others led him to that world of light. 



196 SHADOWS. 

O beauteous sky and rainbowed atmosphere ! 

The grass was soft and frescoed bright with flowers; 
The air so balmy,— music soft and clear 

Mingled with all. Oh, happy, joyful hours ! 

He saw that face who watched his infant years, 
And other loved ones, buried long ago; 

Brightly transfigured everyone appears ; 
Frail Susan, also, whom he used to know. 

They moved a slide, and let him have one sight 
Of that dread place called " spirit-quarantine," 

Where sinners stay whole ages, dark as night, 
To expurgate the beast from man divine. 

They told him then that he must homeward go; 

But Allen felt inclined to linger there : 
To save the quarantine, they let him know, 

'T were better to deodorize elsewhere. 

They said to Allen, who was fifty-five, 

That fifteen years would fill his earthly score ; 

His seventieth year would find him just alive, 
The hungry graveyard knocking at his door. 

Why should this man be blest with such a sight 
While saints go mourning all their days of earth? 

We cannot judge. God doeth all things right; 
Perhaps old Allen's thirst was heritage from birth. 

Then draw the veil, should profanation seek 
To read the list of Allen's reckless days ; 

But let his later living record speak 

How spirit-quarantine reformed his ways. 

Now thoughtfully our footfalls homeward bound, 

And homeward, also, to eternal light; 
While here night's mantle overshades the ground, — 

We wait expectant for a world that 's bright. 



XIX. 

INDIAN-SPIRIT INFLUENCES. 

What the subject suggests, and a supplement of poetry. 
— Astronomical. 

One of the noticeable features in the phenomena of 
modern Spiritualism is the prominence it gives to the 
departed Indian race. There is hardly a medium in 
this whole Endoric class that is not more or less guided 
by, controlled by, or indebted to the departed Oseolas, 
Black Hawks, Red Jackets, Violets, or Blueflowers of 
th$t singular aboriginal people that once covered, in 
their wild and natural way, this North American Con- 
tinent. I have sometimes thought, as this spiritual 
movement, in its modern aspect, is of American 
genesis, that one of the prime factors, perhaps the 
accented one that has made this modern connection 
with mortals in the form, was the influence and 
power of the Indian element in its departed, invisi- 
ble, but still living form. 

I am aware that history indicates that, if these 
phenomena be the influence of the spirits of departed 
human beings, though called modern, they are quite 
an ancient affair; but, in its uninterpreted state, was 

197 



198 SHADOWS. 

kept in the domain of either superstition or revela- 
tion, but only in this age has it been recognized as 
intelligent sensuous phenomena. 

I am inclined to think, as I have said, that we are 
very much indebted to the Indian element in the 
spirit world for the light that was intelligently 
revealed to us in 1848. Perhaps owing to the natu- 
ral way they lived when in the form, it gave them a 
strength or power that a more artificial life would 
not, so that even in spirit life one can say that "it 
is an ill wind that blows no one any good," and 
thus we are the gainers. 

If the conditions had been right, and man had 
been hospitable to its advent, the witchcraft of two 
or three centuries ago, abounding so much in Europe 
and in this country, might have staid and been mod- 
ern Spiritualism long ago, instead of waiting for our 
day. But the reception of it was such that the influ- 
ences paused, and the light (or darkness, if you 
choose to call it so) was withdrawn. I am no par- 
ticular lover of the Indian in the form, or in the raw 
material, so to speak, but I am ashamed of my race 
for treating it as it has, and I find a growing admira- 
tion for that fast-departing race, especially in its 
spiritual life, for the loving and forgiving disposition 
it has manifested in its invisible dealings with us. 

I am not attempting any elaboration of this Indian 
feature of our ism, but am only too glad to recognize 
its importance in this matter in general, and their 
individual importance as guides, body-guards, or con- 



INDIAN-SPIKIT INFLUENCES. 199 

trols of the mediums that figure so largely in this 
modern movement. 

I was once asked by a well-known medium — a 
doctress — to write her a poem for her to read at her 
anniversary, soon to take place. She said Saucy 
Jack, one of her controls, wanted me to. I make no 
pretensions in the poetical direction, but wishing to 
do both her and the invisible Indian a favor, I said I 
would try to do so. " Oh, you will do it," says she ; 
u Saucy Jack says so." I soon after tried to write 
something, and succeeded in slowly working out 
some fifty lines. It was rather hard work, but I 
thought it would answer. 

I met the lady accidentally a few days after, and 
asked her when she wanted the poetry, and to let 
me know in season, so that I could find time to write 
it, and have it ready for her. She spoke right up, 
and said : " Chief, what do you say that for, when 
you have already writteu it, and you have got it now 
in your pocket?" Well, such was the fact; it was, 
certainly, a pretty good guess. I think myself, the 
fact of her saying that the Indian control said I would 
write it, had some effect in stimulating me, as I 
always want the influences to be right when possible. 
I called it 

THE INDIAN PEACE-WHOOP. 

Wand'ring in dreams, in mazy rev'rie lost, 

A feeling strange came o'er me. Tempest tossed, 

Then calm, and then — a light upon me broke. 

I heard a voice ! And thus the spirit spoke : 

" Knowledge is power ! " we hear the white man say ; 

And, lo ! he proves it. We the tribute pay 



200 SHADOWS. 

Of home, of life, of race. Slowly we yield, 

And leave the white man master of the field. 

No more the wigwam, squaw, or brave is seen, 

Though streams still run, and hills and vales are green. 

O'er this broad land the white race rules supreme ; 

It is his hour. But Red Man is our theme. 

Has pale chief all the knowledge, all the power? 

All nature's secrets, animal and flower? 

We are -big med'eine braves ; we have our sense, 

And still are with you, although driven hence. 

Our hunting-ground, invisible to you, is near; 

Some hear our whispers, indistinct, or clear. 

Having the power, through simple modes of life, 

We reach you, white man, forgiving ancient strife; 

Would do you good, would cure the aches and pain 

That flesh is heir to,— thus good health obtain. 

The red man in the form, with instinct blind, 

Oft sensed a truth that culture failed to find. 

As close to earth the Indian puts his ear 

To sense the footfalls too far off to hear, 

Or tread of game, or find perhaps the trail, 

Gaining knowledge where higher outlooks fail, 

Deep lessons inexpressible in speech, 

And thus a royal road to knowledge reach. 

" Knowledge is power," in whispers soft and low 

Say we, and prove it, as our records show. 

We reached humanity in your grandsire's day, 

Aided by spirits bright ; they showed the way ; 

We had the strength. Then mortals were possessed, 

As witches burned, and other ways distressed. 

Liking our sensitives, we soon retired, 

And waited till our service was desired. 

Thus came a solstice to this " Dawning Light." 

Again we come, conditions being right, 

To manifest to you this glorious truth : 

That death is life, and age immortal youth. 

We, red-skinned souls, to nature foudly drawn, 

Are doing work as spirits of the morn ; 

And mediums all are strengthened by our aid, 






INDIAN-SPIRIT INFLUENCES. 201 

And better manifestations now are made. 

Blest be the form, when aided by our race, 

That made it possible in this age to trace 

Intelligent connection in spirit life 

With lover, brother, sister, friend, or wife, 

Whom you thought dead, and thus have found 

That no man ever moldered under ground. 

Then o'er the wide earth let the "Peace-Whoop " sound, 

The spirits have triumphed ! the lost are found ! 

Feeling as I do, and have said, that the Indian 
element is an important factor in the Genesis as well 
as the Exodus or going forth of modern Spiritualism, 
the fact has associated them in my mind with 
the advent of what has been poetically and appro- 
priately called the " Dawning Light.'' As the anni- 
versaries of this event come round every thirty-first 
day of March, the Indian seems to be a figure in the 
picture, though not always brought into the fore- 
ground. I have therefore thought it might not be 
out of good taste, while running thus a little into 
poetry, to add one at the close of this Indian chap- 
ter that was written for one of these anniversaries. 
I wilLprint it as I find it in the report of the pro- 
ceedings of March 31, 1882, as follows : — 

The chairman then introduced to the people, John 
Wetherbee, of Boston, who spoke as follows : — 

Feiends, — Expecting to be asked to say a few 
words on this occasion, I have come prepared with a 
short poem. I am no improviser, and I am no poet; 
but I thought I would follow my impression, and take 
the consequences. 

I have put together a few fragmentary thoughts 



202 SHADOWS. 

suggested by the " Dawning Light " of 1848. I might 
call them " Night Thoughts," for their genesis was in 
the night. " Star Thoughts," perhaps, would be 
better, for when one thinks of the auroral hour of our 
Light, his thoughts are apt to have a heavenly or 
celestial twist in them, and we wander among the 
constellations, — at least I do. This is my preface, 
as well as my apology for what follows : — 

The "Dawning Light" of eighteen forty-eight 

The saints of earth have met to celebrate ; 

Or some of them to thus commemorate 

This great prevision of our future state, — 

That man was not beneath the sod to wait, 

In a dead or decomposed state, 

But pass at once through the celestial gate, 

Into the " Beyond," or " Evergreen Shore," 

The " Sweet By-and-Bye," to die no more, 

Finding our departed friends awaiting, 

With outstretched arms, congratulating 

Us on our arrival from this world of sorrow 

Into the " Summer-Land" of death's tomorrow. 

This, then, was the telephonic story 

That made the " Dawning Light" a day of glory. 

Under the inspiration of this thought, 

So hopeful, and with such a future fraught, 

A feeling strange came o'er me, on my pen ; 

My thoughts were more on angels than on men. 

Well, let it be so, 't is their sacred hour ; 

They did the work, they had the mystic power. 

While being thus celestially inclined, 

My eyes were skyward turned, as well as mind ; 

This globe of earth seemed like a palace-car ; 

More than that, — I was riding on a star. 

Is the earth a palace-car ? 
Are we riding on a star ? 



INDIAN-SPIRIT INFLUENCES. 20? 

Ask the man on Venus bright : 
Watchman, tell us of the night! 
Who with wonder gazes high, 
Sees our planet in his sky, 
Bright as Venus at its best ; 
We shall need no other test ; 
We are riding fast and far, 
We are trav'ling on a star. 

Thou incandescent orb ! Most glorious sun ! 

Holding this star, our world, fast in its course, 

As one will sometimes swing with a string 

A ball round and round, centripetally tied; 

The tension, resisting gravitation, 

Is the force centrifugal. Thus balanced 

Has this old star rolled on through space ; no pause 

Nor change since the stars sang their morning song. 

Thus earth's relation to the god of day. 

This line, holding the earth steady in place, 

Though invisible, immaterial force, 

Is firm and enduring, in length counting 

Almost a hundred million miles, the sweep 

Circumferential six hundred million. 

Thy daily task, old star, then counts in miles 

A million, yes, plus half a million more, 

Before thy daily work is done ; then day 

By day the same to make the year complete ; 

And we are riding on this star sublime. 

Thou bright, planetary neighbor ! tethered 
Like a dory to our ship, — silver-faced moon, — 
Wert thou full six times further off than now, 
Our star would span the distance in a day. 
Where now beheld coquetting with the clouds, 
In four short hours our speed would reach the spot. 
Thirty miles an hour would steam-car travel 
Continuously a year to do this four hours' work. 
Thus hast thou sped, old earth, since time began. 
Thy genesis with its misty morning 



204 SHADOWS. 

No man can date, but thy swift exodus 
He can compute, and in more than fancy 
Knows that he is traveling on a star. 

Is the earth a palace car? 
Are we riding on a star? 
Ask the man on Venus bright : 
Watchman, tell us of the night? 
Who with wonder gazes high, 
Sees our planet in his sky, 
Bright as Venus at its best ; 
We shall need no other test ; 
We are riding fast and far, 
We are traveling on a star. 

This star, our earth, so quickly flying, 
Carrying its more than billion passengers, 
Or precious freight of human beings, jumps 
Never its track. No misplaced switch ever 
Leads our star parabolically astray, 
Nor telescoped by swifter-speeding orbs, — 
Never collision with inward-bound stars. 
So steady and even has been the speed, 
Though moving in its track two thousand miles 
While quickest locomotive travels one, 
That mankind at ease seems standing still, 
Yet all the time is riding on a star. 

Thus would we realize in solemn words 
That we are moving with electric speed, 
Yet slow compared with light, which moves 
Ten thousand times as fast; and thought beats light, 
And spirits travel on the wings of thought. 
While our star, the earth, through space is moving 
Thus its thousand miles and more a minute, 
Other bodies are traveling also, each with 
Its own right of way on their several tracks. 
There are also wandering, harmless systems, 
Streams of granulated, cosmic matter, 
In revolutions sweeping round the sun. 



INDIAN-SPIRIT INFLUENCES. 205 

At times old earth, the star on which we ride, 
Goes through these cosmic systems with a rush. 
The atmospheric clothing of our globe 
Protects us, but the friction from its speed 
Makes incandescent the granulations, 
And they fall in harmless dust, and blazing 
Meteors irradiate the midnight sky, 
While we are riding on this star sublime. 

An impression came to the star-eyed sage 
As he reached this line on his written page, 
Where many an hour he had wasted ink 
To strike an idea that would make men think, 
And during the time had traveled so far 
Without being joggled, though riding a star, 
That there might be zones in the realms of space 
That vitalized thought in the human race, 
The contact affecting humanity's dream 
Something like sailing through the old Gulf Stream, 
Where water is warm to one's physical sense ; 
But these zones warm soul with their influence. 
Thus ages of light, or revivals of thought, 
Have dawned on the world as history has taught ; 
For mankind's movements seem in waves to flow, 
Some mountains high, and some are leveled low, 
More like influence from an outside source, 
That wakes stagnation into active force, 
Perihelions, perhaps, in a spiritual sense, 
Where influence divine is more intense. 

Thus while riding on a star, 
Traveling very fast and far, 
Old earth entered somewhat so, 
Four and thirty years ago, 
The zone of the " Dawning Light," 
That made the conditions right, 
And enabled angels bright 
To make their presence felt ; 
Messages from raps were spelt, 



206 SHADOWS. 

Which, interpreted and read, 
Broke the silence of the dead, 
Thinned the curtain of our fate, 
Forecasted our future state. 
Man need not have traveled far 
To have found the " gates ajar," 
For the spirit world was near, 
Our departed still were here. 
Bat the transit through this " zone" 
Made the earth a telephone, — 
Made sensitive the inward ear, 
And silent voices vocal, clear ; 
Peopling the circumambient air 
With living beauty everywhere. 

Thus we celebrate the date, 

March thirty-first, 'forty-eight, 

As the genesis of our Thought, 

That has golden luster brought 

And marked the age with glory. 

Is it out of place to say 

(While moving through the Milky Way, 

Or Galaxy of stellar light, 

That spans so visibly at night 

The great concave overhead) 

Again the words already said, — 

Is not earth a palace car? 

See us riding on a star. 

Ask the man on Yenus bright : 

Watchman, tell us of the night? 

Who with wonder gazes high, 

Sees our planet in his sky, 

Sees it traveling fast and far, 

While we are riding on the star. 



XX. 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 



An entertaining sketch that will fill up some deficiencies 

in the course of these "Shadows" 

Sometimes I think the dear public of skeptical 
people are often more deceived, their credulity taxed, 
than are the body politic of spiritualistic believers. 

The credulity is on the side of the opposition rather 
than with us. I am sure I have been astute, eye- 
opened, and expert in the investigation of this subject. 
I have seen, of course, attempts to cheat by at least 
supplementing their powers by more or less imposi- 
tion; not always meaning to do anything very wrong, 
but, perhaps, to give more for the fee received than 
the spirits can do through them. 

It has always been my wish, and so has it been the 
wish of Spiritualists generally, that mediums would 
have no manifestations rather than to have fictions, — 
give it up as a failure, want of proper conditions, or 
whatever the cause may be; but never to allow one's 
mediumistic elasticity to stretch into anything of 
their own doing ; in the long run, people who do gen- 
erally come to grief. 

207 



208 SHADOWS. 

• 

There are a great many people who are in the show 
department of this business, often having more or less 
mediumistic power, who find it more profitable to 
cater for the opposition rather than the spiritualistic 
public. It is a matter of dollars and cents with them. 
I could name a man who is a good medium for phys- 
ical manifestations, but likes the popularity and the 
remuneration that he gets from the skeptical world 
better than poverty with truth. I have proved his 
mediumship when incog., under crucial test condi- 
tions, and I have said to him, after making myself 
known : " Why do you go about exposing it, or mix- 
ing fiction extravagantly with fact, and call them 
spiritual manifestations ? " He said in reply : "It is 
wholly a matter of dollars. If I should go into a 
village and do honest work as a spiritual medium, I 
could not get enough to pay my expenses ; but if I 
plan for the- opposition, the religious class, the Chris- 
tian Association, or the fashionable, to expose or 
bring discredit on it, I can get a full hall, and go awa} 7 
with money in my pocket." 

I have been many times to see these paying exhi- 
bitions, and have seen many of the religious, literary, 
and official lights of the community sold, as the say- 
ing is, more than ever I saw a spiritual gathering 
sold, and I have been both amused and grieved to 
see a large audience of respectable and intelligent 
people humbugged into supposing they were witness- 
ing the spiritual manifestations that have converted 
people to the cause. I have felt sorry, being a Spirit- 
ualist, to find that so many people were ready to think 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 209 

that that is the pabulum or sensuous phenomena that 
has attracted and retained me as one of the believers. 

I was once traveling in the far, far West, and on 
the western slope of the Rocky mountains, and hap- 
pened to be stopping in a mining town, where one of 
these shows of big spiritual advertisements had been 
going on; an interesting colloquy or circumstance 
occurred, which was quite amusing. 1 wrote an 
account of it over the signature of " Shadows," and 
that account I will add to what I have already said, 
as a finish to this chapter. If some part of it has 
been already recorded in this book, in the form now 
presented, it will hardly be a repetition. Pebbles, 
you know, become jewels by an appropriate setting ; 
but the " repetition," or fact mentioned, is a jewel, 
setting or no setting; so, if it gets a new hearing, the 
reader will be all the better for it. The article is as 
follows : — 

A traveler, very early in the morning, stopped at 
the tavern in Nevada City. He had come during 
the night in the branch railroad from Colfax, and reg- 
istered his name. It was an hour or two before the 
guests were stirring. Those who looked at the reg- 
ister afterwards, as people are apt to, particularly in 
a suburban town, read the name of " Shadows," Col- 
fax. As soon as breakfast was read}', this new comer, 
" Shadows," of Colfax, was more than ready, after an 
all-night ride, and immediately began sipping his hot 
coffee ; and, before the guests had begun to gather 
much around the table, he had finished his meal, and 
was again comfortably sitting by the stove. 



210 SHADOWS. 

This stove was in the center of what might be 
called the office, as the bar was in the side room on 
the left, and the dining room was on the right, some 
conveniences in the rear, and this office seemed to be 
the general lounging room. This room was quite 
large. On one side was the clerk's counter and desk, 
and large piles of trunks on the other side ; but they 
did not crowd it any. It was roomy, dirty, and com- 
fortable. This stranger, seated by the stove, seemed 
to be in a brown study, taking no notice of anything 
or anybody. Not so the guests, as they came one 
after another out of the dining room, some to stop, 
others in passing gave a look at the stranger, and 
wondered who he was ; the register gave his name. 
They who looked read " Shadows," — the place where 
he hailed from, " Colfax" ; but that was no definition. 

Many, as usual on a cool morning, took seats around 
this stove. - Of the eight or ten who occupied that 
position, some were young, some middle aged, some 
were old, — not very old nor very young. In a pro- 
vincial place or mining town, as this was, a man of 
60 looks easily 70, because the metropolitan style 
was lacking, and slouches more in order than stiff 
hats; and white shirts, though possibly in a majority, 
were not unanimous. It was a place where dress did 
not make the man, nor want of it the fellow. Old 
and young among the sitters looked more or less at 
the stranger, and all showed inquiring minds or faces, 
as if they wanted to ask him who he was, and what 
he was there for, and seemingly knowing no one. 
The stranger, however, gave no signs of explaining 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 211 

himself, — seemed perfectly at ease, and busy with 
his own thoughts. 

Soon, however, the companions of the stove began 
to be sociable, still with an eye now and then on the 
stranger, to see, perhaps, if he thawed out any. They 
soon came to the conclusion that their talking or 
looking was quite indifferent to him. In the course 
of the general talk it seemed that some persons had 
created quite a sensation the Sunday evening before, 
filling the largest hall in the town to witness their 
wonderfully advertised spiritual manifestations. The 
parties were Eva Fay and a Mr. Bidden, I think. 
No Spiritualist who reads the newspapers would take 
any stock in them. 

In listening to this general talk, and their several 
comments, pro and eon, one could have got a tolera- 
bly fair account of what occurred at that entertain- 
ment, and, as it will be seen, this stranger did; but 
he gave no signs of interest ; and whether he was lis- 
tening or not, the strangers did not know. He cer- 
tainly appeared to be deep in thought, living in a 
different world from them. 

One of the younger members of the group, and 
one who talked more than his share, and might be 
described as a " bar-room boss," summed it all up by 
saying "it was a big humbug;" and I guess he was 
right, only he intended his " big humbug " to cover 
the whole subject from beginning to end, there and 
elsewhere. An old man (who used a crutch, having 
fallen from a rock), taking his pipe out of his mouth, 
said: "I do not think so; some of it may have 



212 SHADOWS. 

been, but some of the things were really honestly 
done." " I do n't think Prof. Crosby took any stock 
in them, and he is a Spiritualist," said another. At 
the name of Crosby, the stranger looked at the party, 
but, in an instant, he was indifferent again. Some 
had noticed the look, and brought Prof. Crosby's 
name more to the front in this connection, but it had 
lost its charm, and the conversation subsided again 
into the subject of spiritual manifestations generally. 
The young man, who we said seemed to sum it 
all up as a big humbug, said then, in a very positive 
way, that "Spirits have nothing to do with this 
folderol. All the things we read of as being done all 
over the country, and called spiritual manifestations, 
are all frauds." "Oh, that cannot be," said another. 
But the "boss," who seemed to know it all, and had 
seen it all — nothing more for him to learn — said: 
" I admit some of it to be true ; but no spirits ; it is 
electricity and mesmerism and mind-reading. All 
the rope-tying, rings put onto connected arms, slate- 
writing, tipping of tables, bell-ringing, are all decep- 
tion, sleight-of-hand, or adroitness. Do you not see, 
said he, "how large their wrists are, and hands 
small ? " This young man was very positive ; spoke 
as if used to carrying his point in that crowd, as if 
those listeners were in the habit of being convinced 
by his saying so. All the argument need not be 
expressed in this wayside account. The reader will 
get about the situation from what has been related, 
this young " boss " of words being particularly happy 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 213 

in clinching his argument with electricity, mesmer- 
ism, and mind-reading. 

The stranger turned his eye on this positive and 
fluent talker, and said in a bright, cheerful, but very 
deliberate manner : " My friend, will you define elec- 
tricity? What is it?" The suddenness of the ques- 
tion embarrassed the young man a little, and he 
made, at first, no reply. All the listeners were as 
much interested in the stranger's breaking silence as 
in the question. The young speaker seemed to be 
aware that it was very easy to say it was electricity, 
but not so easy to tell what electricity was. The party 
all looked at the stranger, who, at last, had opened 
his mouth, and, after the pause mentioned, said to 
the young man : " You need not try to answer the 
question. The best that can be done by anyone is 
to say it is a mode of motion. Farraday once said, in 
reply to a question put to him : 4 1 suppose I know as 
much about electricity as anyone, and I am unable 
to say what it is, or define it.' If Farraday was dumb, 
it is no discredit to you to be dumb on the subject 
also. The spiritual manifestations may be electricity, 
as j^ou say ; but, to say so, is no explanation." 

The young man, not wishing to lose any of his 
prestige in his own field, said to the stranger he had 
more in his mind mesmerism than electricity. The 
stranger at once said : u Well, my friend, what is 
mesmerism ? " He replied : "The influence one mind 
has upon or over another, sometimes controlling it." 
" That is correct," said the stranger ; " and added : 
" Is it the mind or the body that mesmerizes or con- 



214 SHADOWS. 

trols the subject?" The young man said, rather 
hesitatingly: "The mind." "Of course," said the 
stranger, "for a body without a mind, or a corpse, 
would have no mesmeric power. I think," con- 
tinued the stranger, "that Spiritualism is mesmer- 
ism." The young man began to feel as though he 
had an ally. 

The stranger then said : " As the body cannot, of 
itself, mesmerize without a mind, is it not probable 
that mind can without a body ? " "I never saw one, 
or ever heard of one," said the young man ; and 
the sitters around the stove were interested and 
amused. "Well," said the stranger, "there are a 
great many things that exist that we cannot see, or 
intelligently perceive. We cannot see electricity or 
mesmerism. We know them only by their effects. 
We do not see minds or spirits ; we know them by 
their effects. You have taken, my young friend, 
an electric shock, or seen one taken, and so you 
know electricity exists ; some day, if you are lucky, 
you will have a spiritual shock ; then you will have 
evidence of the other." 

The young man said, in reply to the stranger: 
"A man may exist, after his death, with thinking 
powers, but I do not believe it. I am willing," said 
he, " to be convinced ; I would like a spiritual shock 
here and now." "Well," said the stranger, "if I 
were a ' machine,' and conditions were right, I would 
give you one ; but, as I am not, I will tell you of one 
I had nryself. I have had a great many. This that I 
now refer to is so perfectly unmistakable that, if you 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 215 

believe me, you will have to be convinced. I do not 
expect, however, you will be convinced ; the subject 
is a matter of experience rather than of argument." 
The stove-surroundings seemed desirous for an ac- 
count of the stranger's first shock, so he gave it sub- 
stantially as follows : — 

" A niece of mine, a young lady of sixteen, said to 
me during a visit at my house : 'Uncle, are you still 
a Spiritualist?' I replied: Yes. She then related 
something rather strange that had occurred in her 
presence. I said : Molly, you must be a medium ; 
come and sit with me at this table. She did so, and 
we tried for raps, or tips, but did not succeed. I 
then put a pencil in her hand to hold, and, seeing a 
motion, I put a sheet of paper under it, and her hand 
made up and down motions, dotting the paper, but 
no writing. The movement was strange to her, as it 
was wholly involuntary. I then put the end of my 
index-finger on the wrist of the hand that held the 
pencil, — nothing more, — and her hand began to 
write line after line, she saying : ' How queer, uncle ; 
I do n*t do that ; why, see, it goes of itself, and my 
hand wont stop.' In this way she filled the page, 
which I took, and she went right on writing the next 
while I was reading the first, and it was the begin- 
ning of a wise, intelligent letter. 

"While writing in this way, she was all the time 
talking excitedly to me, often saying: 'Only see it, 
uncle, and I am not doing it ' (and the young man 
smiled, as if he was thinking to himself: 'How she 
was fooling the old man'). She ended the commu 



216 SHADOWS. 

nication by signing the name of an old aunt of mine 
who had died nearly fifty years ago, when my sister, 
the mother of this young lady, was a child, and this 
niece had never heard of such a person. So far, 
knowing that this young lady was honest, it was 
tolerable proof of the action of a spirit." 

The young man said : " That is the way with all 
you folks. That would not suit me ; that may have 
been all pretence. I do not say it was, Mr. Shadows, 
but it was possible; and, certainly, if there is any 
way of accounting for a thing naturally, no one 
will suggest the supernatural." "But, listen to me," 
said the stranger ; u what do you think this letter 
was ? It was from an invisible and watchful intelli- 
gence, who wrote in this way: 'You' (this young 
lady) c are doing yourself and the young man an 
injury ; the flirtation that you are now carrying on 
with that young college student, Mr. Chick, is 
highly improper, and will do an injury to both of 
you ; it will amount to nothing. Both of you are 
too young, and you will both in time find your proper 
mates. Your mother would not like it, if she knew 
it; and now as I' (this invisible relative) ' am watch- 
ing over you, I feel it my duty, as I love you, Molly, 
to have trifling ended. You must end it, or go to 
your mother and confide in her, who now knows 
nothing of it. I take this way of reaching you, and 
it shows you have friends watching you, whether 
you wake or whether you sleep.' " 

The stranger said he told this from memory, and 
it was the substance of a long letter written auto- 



A WAYSIDE SKETCH. 217 

matically, in the way described, by this young lady. 
The nature of it is proof of its abnormal character. 
I knew what she was writing before she did, other- 
wise she never would have allowed me to see it. 
The young lady burst into tears from mortification 
to see her inmost thoughts thus exposed. I said : 
u Who is this Mr. Chick? Is there any such per- 
son? She said: 'He is a nice young man, who is in 
college in our neighborhood, and I love him very 
much.' Suffice it to say," said the stranger, "the 
young lady learned a wise lesson that she has never 
forgotten. There are eyes that see us and watch us, 
and the knowledge of that fact, I may as well add, 
is what the world needs more than it needs anything 
else." 

The young man had to own up that this was a re- 
markable case, as the stranger had stated it. " But I 
have had," said he, " no such experience myself, and 
I cannot believe it. I might have been saved from 
much trouble if anybody's aunt had written a letter 
to me. You are a stranger," said the young man ; 
"you tell a good story. I do n't want to doubt you, 
sir, but it smells to me fishy. Perhaps I would think 
otherwise if I knew you ; but I would have to have 
the experience myself. This may be a 'spiritual 
shock' to you, but it has not shocked me a bit; and, 
if I had been present, I feel pretty sure it would not 
have struck me." 

At this moment in walked Prof. Crosbj r from the 
dining-room. The stranger's back was towards him. 
He had heard a few of the last words of the confab, 



218 SHADOWS. 

and the stranger turning to see who had entered, the 
professor rushed towards him, saying : " Good God, 
John, where did you come from ? " and he intro- 
duced the stranger to the persons around him as his 
friend " Shadows," of Boston. 

It only remains for me to say that I wanted to 
surprise my friend, and, finding myself within a few 
hours' ride from him, thought I would make him a 
visit. I have no doubt, also, I instructed as well as 
entertained the members of the tavern office in that 
colloquy, and I think it was a fortunate circumstance 
that the " stranger " happened to be present. I 
think that Miss Fay is a medium, but I do not 
think her shows are any credit to Spiritualism. But 
the cause was not hurt any by the light that the 
" stranger," now known as " Shadows," cast upon 
the subject. 



XXT. 

MATTER AND SPIRIT. 

Of intercourse with sjyirits. — Some conditions loorth 
knowing. — Illustrations — Sealed letters. 

It is the opinion of many able writers, including 
the late Robert Dale Owen (who had wide experi- 
ence in dealing with the spirits, and did so very 
advantageously), that spirits do not see material 
objects, or hear material sounds, as we mortals do. 
From my own experiences, I agree with him and 
them that it requires material organs to see material 
objects and hear material or external sounds. In 
one sense, sounds may not be strictly material ; for 
instance, the human voice, — that is, an external 
expression of the human spirit, but it is material in 
its manifestation from its impulse to its expression. 
It is air vibrations, and air is material. It requires 
the auricular organ to hear a sound; by and through 
that organ it reaches the sensorium, aud becomes a 
matter of consciousness. So, also, it requires the 
optical organ to see a material object, and through 
it the object reaches the sensorium, and becomes a 
matter of consciousness or perception. 

219 



220 SHADOWS. 

This seems very simple talk on very common, simple 
things. Optical and auricular organs are so common, 
born with us, and are in practical use from infancy to 
age with no effort on our part. The operation is so 
simple that, as a matter of course, the modus oper- 
andi, and the philosophy of the phenomena of per- 
ception is rarely thought of. Yet, simple and com- 
mon as it is, no one, no matter the extent of his 
knowledge, however much of a scientist or student 
in these things he may be, is able to explain how the 
object which is material becomes a matter of con- 
sciousness, which is spiritual. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most intuitional 
of men, who seems to sense a truth and then embody 
it in living language so pleasant to remember that it 
makes his every thought a treasure, said : " It is so 
wonderful to our neurologists that a man should see 
without eyes ; but it does not occur to them that it 
is just as wonderful that he should see with them." 
Simple as the quoted fact seems, it is both wonderful 
and inexplicable that with eyes we should be able 
to see and make material objects manifest to our 
spirits. 

It is not our purpose to write an essay on percep- 
tion, which I seem to be doing, but only to philoso- 
phize a little in this way to smooth the abruptness of 
the statement, that our spirit friends do not see us 
objectively or materially in the sense that we mortals 
see each other. It is, however, no difficult thing for 
any or all spirits to see in this objective or external 
way, if they so desire, or for any purpose. It must 



MATTER AND SPIRIT. 221 

be remembered that we are spirits now as well as 
materialized beings, and probably we are as well 
known in our spiritual aspects, by our friends in the 
spirit world, as we are ourselves by the memory or 
sight of us as encased in the mortal form. 

I said it required material organs to see material 
things ; they are easily found by spirits ; the world 
is full of them. All the time there is a billion and 
almost a half at the service of the spirits. Spirits 
have only to come en rapport with the possessor of 
material optics or auricular ones in place, to thus see 
the world of nature or materiality as we mortals see 
it. So easy and so general is this that the spirits, 
through mediums, will often say they see us as we 
see each other ; but I am sure for them to do so, 
which is very common, they do it in the way sug- 
gested, which is one slight remove from the direct 
objective way. The spirit has only to be conscious 
of the consciousness of the person by whose aid or 
with whose organs the said spirit sees to see objects 
as he does. 

In one sense, as I have said, the object in normal 
human seeing is a foreign thing to the seer, — a dis- 
crete separation, for spirits cannot see, hear, or toucli 
matter; only the image or sensation of it reaches the 
human sensorium. For instance, illustrating the 
point from an optical point of view, the image or 
picture of an object reaches the retina and is pic- 
tured on it, and that image or picture reaches the 
consciousness of the person who is looking at it ; then 
it may be said to be the pictorial property of the 



222 SHADOWS. 

spirit, and may be by the same source the property 
or consciousness of the spirit that is then en rapport. 
Some consideration of this point, which is really a 
matter strictly in the domain of science, is important 
in grasping the subject of the spiritual manifesta- 
tions, or the dynamics of this more or less occult 
subject. 

In corroboration of what has been said herein, I 
will quote from the writings of Eugene Crowell, 
where he writes on this subject, as follows : — 

" It may here be proper to say something respect- 
ing the power of spirits to hear our conversation, as 
there are erroneous views prevalent even among 
Spiritualists upon this question. I have devoted 
considerable time and attention to this subject, and, 
as the result, I find that most spirits, unless on low 
planes, cannot distinctly hear us converse ; they more 
generally perceive our thoughts ; while, on the con- 
trary, spirits on the lower planes cannot read our 
thoughts, but can more readily hear our conversa- 
tion. 

"Old John and Big Bear (two spirits) say their 
ability to hear mortal voices (when not in control) 
varies in every house they visit ? In my house they 
can understand our conversation best when a certain 
member of my family is present, and they elsewhere 
can hear best when some person present is meclium- 
istic. In the presence of their medium they can 
always hear distinctly what is said by others. Through 
other reliable mediums, what is here stated has been 
confirmed, and it was only after thorough investiga- 



MATTER AND SPIRIT. 223 

tion that I accepted the assertion as hurtful, it being 
at variance with my preconceived opinions." 

With the foregoing statement and quotation, the 
following experience will be illustrative and inter- 
esting, and will not only explain it, but will explain 
many of the utterances from the spirit world. One 
of the most reliable mediums I have ever known, and 
one who has given me demonstrative evidence of his 
genuine power, whose phase is the answering of 
sealed letters, and is entitled to his claim of keeping 
a spirit post-office. After receiving many answers 
through him from various spirits, one from my sister 
disturbed me. It was technically correct, and had 
never been opened, but it did not seem, in its 
extended answer to my query, to be the warm- 
hearted letter that my sister would have written : 
and if that was her now heavenly, platonic, dignified 
way, I felt that she must be so changed in the 
undress of the spirit that I had really lost my sister 
even if I had found her. 

Seeking after the truth, and trying, as is my cus- 
tom, to get at the facts of the case, I wrote a letter 
to my father, John Wetherbee, adding to the address 
inside, u or any of my spirit friends,'' asking four 
definite questions. My father was then alive, living 
in New York, but I wrote the letter as if it was for a 
spirit. I had sealed it up so that it could not be 
opened without my knowing it. I put no address on 
the envelope ; that was entirely blank ; no one but I 
knew for whom it was for. 

I went with it to this medium, found him sitting 



224 SHADOWS. 

at his writing-table, took my seat opposite to him, and 
handed him the letter. He said he was tired, and so 
he would keep it till the next day, and laid it on the 
shelf with other letters. After a little general con- 
versation upon other matters, as I knew him very 
well, he suddenly stopped, reached for the letter that 
he had placed on the shelf, and said the spirit was 
here, and he would answer it then. Please bear in 
mind that the letter had not been out of my sight. 
With the letter unaddressed and unopened before 
him, the fingers of his left hand resting on it, but not 
covering it, with his right hand he wrote, I looking 
on and reading as he wrote, as follows : " My dear son 
and namesake," and copied the questions literally in 
their order, and intelligently and elaborately answered 
each, as anyone could have done who had read the 
questions, and then he ended by saying, or rather 
writing : " Your once earthly but now spirit father, 
John Wetherbee." 

The medium was very much surprised, when I 
opened and read the questions and name to him, that 
I was not satisfied. " What," said he, " do you 
expect?" I said: "The truth." My father was 
alive, and that lying spirit says : " Your once earthly 
and now spirit father." I was very much set back 
by this outcome, not understanding it then. One 
thing I was sure of, the perfect honesty of the me- 
dium, for I saw the production was honestly done 
before my eyes, only the spirit assumed to be my 
father when he was not. I soon got at the rationale 
of this, and lost my interest in such communications 



MATTER AKD SPIRIT. 225 

as identifications, but proved them to be spiritual 
beyond a doubt, and that was a great point settled, 
even if one was not sure who he was corresponding 
with. 

The remarks I have made on seeing and hearing 
by the spirits explain how this mistake on the part 
of the spirits happened. Some spirits read the mind 
of the sitter. The spirits controlling the medium, 
his band as they call it, do the autographic work, 
reading probably clairvoyantly the letter which is 
unopened. They ought to be able to read the mind 
of the sitter or the writer of the letter. To do that, 
according to the ideas of Robert Dale Owen and 
Eugene Crowell, the executing spirit must be of a 
higher grade than the writer or sitter. It is hard to 
understand what higher or lower grade in spiritual 
parlance means, probably spiritually rather than intel- 
lectually ; at any rate, it is on a different system from 
the expression " higher and lower " in this world's 
matters. 

It was very evident the spirits on that occasion, 
besides not being my father or my departed friends, 
could not read my mind, which then and all the time 
was intensely charged with the thought. I was full 
of it, expecting some spirit would say : " You can 
reach your father by the mail terrestrial, but I will 
answer your questions." It almost seems, on the 
principle of mind-reading, that that might hav T e been 
the result. Intense as the thought was in my mind, 
the spirits controlling this medium had no access to 
me, even if they had in a clairvoyant way to the 



226 SHADOWS. 

sealed letter. I think, if I have been lucid in my 
statement, one will see where' and how the mistake 
was made on the part of the spirits. The band con- 
trolling this medium, and friendly to him, did the 
work as best it could; not having access to my mind, 
they did not know my father was alive. I am glad 
they did not, for they then might have made a test 
of it for me when it would not have been one. 

I have many times, since this paternal one, had 
sealed letters answered quite satisfactorily, and once 
or twice where the identity was quite complete, — at 
least I would be straining harder if I undertook to 
prove it a fiction than I would to consider it what 
it claimed to be. As I did not relate the circum- 
stances of the letter or show its questionable genesis, 
but as an illustration of the subject treated, as well 
as to show the difficulties attending the identification 
of spirits generally, I will add in closing an account 
of one, that at least approximates to identification. 

I had a reason for writing a letter to a certain 
spirit friend, to ask his opinion and advice, and, in 
the course of a few days I received an answer from 
that spirit, containing also the letter I had sent 
unopened. I put the missive in my pocket to read 
at leisure, and forgot all about it. On my way home, 
I stopped at Mrs. Mary Hardy's, the well-known 
medium, by appointment, and found a friend waiting 
there for me. We were going to have a sitting 
together. During the sitting, the spirit came that I 
had written to, and my friend said to the spirit: 
" Did you receive the letter that John wrote you the 



MATTER AND SPIRIT. 227 

other day?" "Yes," said the spirit, "and I have 
answered it, and he has got it now in his pocket." 

That reminded me of the fact which I had forgot- 
ten, and I said to my friend in his surprise : " That is 
so ; I got it this morning and forgot all about it," and 
taking it out of my pocket, I said to him: " There it 
is." I do not see very easily how that could be any- 
thing else than a spirit's reply, and it seems to me 
it would be straining some not to admit it to 
have been actually, under the circumstances, from 
the very spirit to whom I had written. The clair- 
voyant eyes of the spirit could have seen possibly the 
message in my pocket, and thus got his information, 
but I am inclined to think it was from the identical 
spirit who knew the fact legitimately. 

I have no question of the ability of reaching spirits 
and getting intelligent answers by writing in this 
way, but there is apt to be an uncertainly as to the 
identification, as was the case when I wrote to my 
living father in the form, as if he was a spirit, and 
got a reply from an alias, who assumed to be my 
"once earthly and now spirit father. ,s I have pretty 
clear ideas how this is done, and why it is done by 
the spirits in the interest or benefit of the medium, 
and the fact of the work being done by spirits settles 
the important part of the question, for if one spirit 
can come, even a tricky one, so can a right and true 
one by the same law, if the conditions are right. 

If that spirit who wrote the answer to me, assum- 
ing to be my once earthly father, had been Theodore 
Parker, or any high-toned spirit, on the principle 



228 SHADOWS. 

suggested by Robert Dale Owen and Eugene Crowell, 
to whom I have referred, he could have read the 
strong desire already then formulated in my mind, 
and get the bottom facts in the case, and he would not 
have assumed to have been my father. I can con- 
ceive how such a spirit might have given me a per- 
fect identification. I can conceive, also, how such a 
spirit might not have fancied my deception, and 
paid me in kind. That was the way the medium 
explained this affair. It was not satisfactory to me, 
for I know my motive was good, and that I was 
honestly seeking after truth. One can see there is 
great difficulty in knowing who the invisible really 
is that responds to you. It was a great pleasure to 
me to know beyond a question that the spirit was a 
bogus father, and to know, also, that the medium 
was honest clear through. It is a pleasure, also, to 
know that I-have had some communications, of which 
I have spoken, through the same amanuensis that 
were in every way authentic. 

The object of stating this point so minutely is for 
the guide of others, — for one to see there are disabili- 
ties to encounter, and not be unnecessarily suspicious 
of the medium, for the deficiencies may be farther in. 



XXII. 

A PENUMBRAL SKETCH. 

An afternoon with the spirits. — A departed friend 
returns from over the river, and owns up. 

The following article I copy almost verbatim from 
one I wrote and had published in the Banner of 
Light. It embodies some interesting matters that 
made a deep impression on me, as being unquestion- 
ably spiritual. The incidents that make the article 
interesting to me come under the head of trifles in a 
worldly sense, if anything is trifling that has the 
luster of a spiritual source on it. I will, however, 
present the article without much preface, letting it 
speak for itself, which is as follows : — 

"Full oft my feelings make me start, 
Like footprints on some desert shore, 
As if the chambers of my heart 

Had heard their shadowy steps before." 

I begin with these lines very much as we sing the 
"Sweet By-and-Bye " at a seance, for the sake of the 
proper conditions, and, at the same time, the weird 
thought that the verse suggests expresses the state 
of my mind at the present moment, having been 

229 



230 SHADOWS. 

thinking of a late experience, and also while having 
the experience. It seems to be a proper state of 
mind in which to relate it. The experience was 
exceedingly interesting to me. Whether I can make 
it so to the reader remains to be seen. 

Now, do not expect too much after this shadowy 
beginning, and thus be disappointed, but remember 
that sometimes the simplicities are in order, and very 
often with me, and, doubtless, with many others, 
some trifling incident among the manifestations will 
answer the earnest, hungry call in the following lines 
affirmatively (it is necessary to print them in this 
article, though quoted before in one of the chapters 
of this book, as the reader will see) when some 
wonderful manifestation might not, — the waters of 
Jordan, you remember, cured the royal leper when 
the larger rivers of his own country would not. 

"Ah, blow me the scent of one lily to tell 

That it grew outside of the world at most ; 
Ah, show me a plume to touch, or a shell, 
That whispers of some unearthly coast." 

Two of my friends from Providence called on me 
the other afternoon. One of them was a Spiritualist 
in a mild, quiet way, not conspicuously identified 
with the subject, but was a very firm believer, — had 
had evidences of its basic truth in his own home. 
The other was a legal gentleman of some repute, not 
a Spiritualist, I was going to say, but it is hard to 
tell who is and who is not, this thought has so pene- 
trated the general mind. It seems he had been at 



A PENUMBRAL SKETCH. 231 

some sittings at some earlier date, and thought there 
was something in it besides delusion and kumbug- 
gery, but had never been at a spiritual meeting ; so 
neither was known in the city. 

These two men, whom I will call Daniel and 
Ezekiel, because these two names popped into my 
mind, though in no sense suggestive of my friends, 
who are neither prophets, or the sons of prophets, 
both being men of the world, and of business. 

"Well," said they, after the civilities were over, 
" what is there going on this afternoon? Where can 
we go and see something?" — meaning spiritual 
manifestations. We looked over the list ; there were 
five or six interesting chances, but we could take in 
but one, and as there was not much time before they 
would begin, and, possibly, then the one selected 
would be full; but, like Luath, the dog of which 
Burns speaks, — 

"His honest, sonsie, baws'ut face, 
Aye gat him friends in ilka place." 

So they had no fears on that score, but took their 
chances, and went to see the "Berry sisters," who 
are materializing mediums, as well as for other phys- 
ical manifestations, and we moved in their direction. 
Though it did not happen to be a materialization 
seance, when we got there, as we expected, it was one 
of the occasions when none of us were disappointed. 

As I have said, Daniel and Ezekiel were entire 
strangers to the medium, and were not introduced 
for obvious reasons, and thev were unknown also to 



232 SHADOWS. 

all the persons present. This happened to be Miss 
Ellen Berry's dark circle. Daniel did not seem to 
get much during this seance (some people somehow 
always seem to get more than others). With Ezekiel 
it was otherwise. The medium, who w T as seated at 
some distance from the latter (Daniel sitting at one 
end of a twelve-foot table, and Ezekiel side of me 
at the other end), she being seated about in the 

center, said she heard the name of Ezekiel H ; 

that was the full name of my friend ; and later, when 
the medium was sitting nearer to him, the same 
name came, and also one or two of his relatives' 
names were mentioned ; they also wrote some mes- 
sages. They were from two or three different spirits, 
and were remarkably good tests. I was presuming 

Ezekiel H was the name of my friend, but it 

seems it was an uncle of the same name, and the 
message showed the fact, besides his information in 
reply to a question from me, as I did not know he 
had an uncle who was a namesake. 

I always am interested in tests ; but I generally 
have to get them by observation, as in this case, for 
personally my spirit friends are apt to be known to 
the mediums, for my pen is such a tell-tale. On this 
occasion, however, 1 not only realized my friend's 
tests, which were unmistakably so to him, and there- 
fore to me, but I had them directly, also, and this is 
what I referred to when I began this article. It is 
unnecessary to speak of Albert and Hattie, or the 
spirits of Amory and Huntington, who manifested to 
me for reasons mentioned ; they would hardly be 



A PENUMBBAL SKETCH. 233 

tests; and yet in Hattie's manifestation there was 
something worth mentioning. She kissed me on the 
forehead and whispered her name, and in doing so 
she was so near I felt her hair as it touched my head 
and face, and the medium being seated closely by 
my side, and I holding her hand, I know she did not 
and could not move, and the circle being unbroken 
I know that it was some unearthly head and hair that 
whispered and came in contact with mine ; and I hope 
the writer of that verse who wanted a shell "that 
whispered of some unearthly coast," or anybody else 
who is hungry in that direction, will take my word 
that if an " unearthly head " will answer as well as a 
"shell," or "the scent of a lily," that it has been my 
experience. I seem to be spinning this out ; but I 
have not yet reached the circumstance that has 
inspired my pen. 

My friend, Seth E. Brown, — I will be excused in 
using names, I am sure he will not object to it, and 
I am something like Junius, who wrote the letters, 
who liked to deal with persons, not with shadows; yet 
I am not like him, for I do and am dealing with "shad- 
ows " in this book; but now, in dealing with Brown, 
I am dealing with a person who now may pass for a 
"shadow." But it pleases me to feel that the most 
substantial things in the universe are spirits ; they 
are the real, we are the fleeting. "We," as Emerson 
says, "are only the flux of matter over the wires of 
thought." 

My friend Brown died very suddenly about five or 
six weeks ago (May, 1884), and who until a year ago 



234 SHADOWS. 

was a joint tenant with me in the business office I 
occupied, and we had been together in this way for 
several years. We were very intimate in a business 
way, and many an hour have we chatted on these 
spiritual matters. He was not a Spiritualist, but 
was very hospitable to the subject; probably like many 
others he believed more than he had the courage to 
admit. He thought I had had great evidence, and 
wished that he had. He often said : " We will all 
know some day whether it is true ; " in fact, after any 
long colloquy on the subject, that was his stereotyped 
ending, — meaning by it that when we died we should 
know then whether we were still alive. He generally 
said, also, or did sometimes, that if he died before I 
did he would come and let me know if it was true. 
" So do," I replied, and said ditto. It was not many 
weeks before he died that I had one of these chats 
with him, which was ended with that usual remark. 

While at this seance of which I have been speak- 
ing, with Daniel and Ezekiel, and during the manifes- 
tations that were then going on, I had some very 
vigorous pounds on the top of my head, and I said 

mentally, as that was the usual way, "Is that ?" 

(mentioning the name of a spirit friend, but not 
speaking it vocally), and got one smart touch by the 
spirit on my head which means "No " as the response. 
I continued then in the same way to ask the names 
of my departed friends, and the response was " No" 
every time, and then Brown's name popped into my 
mind, and almost before I got it mentally formulated, 
as if the spirit knew it as quickly as I did, the " Yes " 



A PENUMBBAL SKETCH. 235 

came quite vigorously, and I said: "Is that really 
you, Seth?" only I did not say "Seth" vocally, but 
thought it. Besides the three pounds on my head, I 
got quite a number on my back, and I have no doubt 
it was the spirit of my friend. It was almost as if he 
had said : " Did I not tell you, John, that I would 
come?" 

The medium later, and sitting at another part of 
the table farther from me, said, addressing me : " That 
friend of yours is still with you ; he seems very glad ; 
his name is Seth, I cannot get the rest of his name." 
That was right, but the medium did not know it, for 
his name had not then been mentioned. I had beeu 
very particular. When the room was lighted again, 
I found I had some messages written by the spirits 
the same way that my friend Ezekiel had, of which I 
have spoken. I will mention here that when the 
messages were written to me and to Ezekiel, I held 
the medium's hand, and know that she did not do 
the writing, and with that company it is absurd to 
talk of confederates. I am cutting this short, and 
leaving out many of the points of this seance for the 
sake of brevity, and confine myself as much as possi- 
ble to the Brown complexion of this experience. 

Among the messages from Albert, Hattie, and oth- 
ers was this one from Brown: "John, I believe it 
now. — Seth." This was a very short message ; but it 
seemed very appropriate, and what I ought to have 
expected from him, if it was he. The medium never 
knew Mr. Brown, or my connection with him. I was 
not expecting him nor thinking of him, and I began 



236 SHADOWS. 

to exhaust the names of my departed friends when 
his name occurred to me. I really think it was he, 
and his message though short was full of meaning, — 
multum in parvo, — "I believe it now." It certainly 
made an intelligent connection with our antecedent 
talks to which I have referred, and wholly unknown 
to the medium and anyone else in the room but 
me. 

At the close of this seance my friends, as well as 
myself, felt as if the two hours we had spent with 
Miss Berry as being the u gates ajar," and among the 
departed, had not been time wasted. We all three 
talked over the matter by ourselves. Ezekiel had 
oral and other tests, and many remarkable messages, 
which were what might have been expected from the 
spirits communicating. One message from a distin- 
guished, but departed, lawyer of his city was very 
satisfactory.- I knew the man by reputation, but did 
not know him as in any way connected with Ezekiel, 
but it seems he was on quite intimate terms, and the 
message was in keeping with it, and he went home 
pretty strong in the faith. In fact, we all three can 
be counted on as Spiritualists, if there were any 
doubts before. 

I began this penumbral sketch with a verse of 
poetry, and perhaps it will be as well for symmetry to 
end with one. I sometimes think a verse, with a 
sublime and fitting thought in it, is more suggestive 
and ornamental than a peroration, so I draft on the 
following : — 



A PENUMBRAL SKETCH. 237 

' I feel their touch upon my hair, 
Upon my cheek and on my brow ; 
I know that they are everywhere, 
That they are with me even now." 



XXIII. 



MATERIALIZATION. 



Affirmations. — Critical comments. — Illustrative 

Experiences. 

I will begin a chapter on this subject by saying 
the materialization of human forms, or what is called 
by that name, is a fact, — that is, human forms are 
produced, extemporized so to speak, into visible, 
tangible, or sensuous apparitions. I firmly believe 
this, both theoretically and practically, — have had 
the evidence that makes me sure of what I so posi- 
tively state. 

Speaking of it theoretically, I have had, as the 
reader of this book will know, in my own house, and 
under the most favorable conditions, sensuous, tangi- 
ble, and intelligent evidence of the materialization 
of a seemingly human hand that I could grasp, and 
have had that evidence hundreds of times. I have had 
also the handling and close ocular inspection of hands 
of apparent flesh and bones, in fact, real human 
hands, that were not attached to human bodies, but 
were as alive and pliable and sensitive as my own. 
Now, therefore, giving us a hand materialized, the 



MATERIALIZATION. 239 

production of the whole form is possible also. These 
experiences of mine were long before the advent of 
the full-form manifestations; tin's, then, is my ground 
for believing in the phase theoretically. 

I have had experience with about all of the medi- 
ums for materialization who have been in this vicin- 
ity, and have had some ocular proof that these forms 
are, sometimes at least, what they claim to be ; not to 
the extent I wish, but added to the fact that, with 
the majority of mediums for this phase, I have had 
perfect proof that personating, acting a part, or con- 
federacy, is not the modus operandi of their produc- 
tion. This, then, is my ground for believing in the 
phase practically. 

I must, also, with my experience, add that, to me, 
as a whole, it is not the most interesting phase of the 
spiritual phenomena. I cau say, with Leigh Hunt : — 

"How sweet it were if. without feeble fright, 
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight, 
An angel came to us, and we could bear 
To see it issue from the silent air 
At evening in our room — " 

because the evidence through the sense of sight, as 
an eminent savant has said, is stronger testimony than 
evidence through the senses of hearing and touch. 
I am hardly prepared to admit that, it depends so 
much on what we are testing, and our intellectual 
make-up, as connected with our several senses. But, 
referring to the poetic suggestion, the manifestations 
of spirit forms have never come " at evening in our 
room " in a way that would respond to Leigh Hunt's 



240 SHADOWS. 

" sweet " possibility, as suggested by the quotation, 
and, in fact, has been the dream or fancy, bordering 
almost upon expectation of the poets generally, as 
memory and records will show. So, as I have said, 
believing in the fact both theoretically and practi- 
cally, I am not fascinated with the materialized 
return of departed spirits as I would be if they came 
in a less questionable manner. I hardly know how 
to express what I want to say; but I trust in the 
elaboration of my thought I will make my ideas 
manifest and manifestly friendly to the phase, before 
I get through the chapter. 

In spiritual manifestations, as in scientific research, 
we must make the most of the best conditions we can 
get. One cannot always command his conditions, 
whether spiritual or scientific. We are obliged in 
astronomy to look at the sun or stars through forty 
miles or more of atmosphere ; it is possible, if we 
could command an independent standpoint, we might 
have to modify some of our conclusions. Now, it 
seems darkness is a requisite condition for the pro- 
duction of materialized spirit forms ; not total dark- 
ness, but a very few degrees above it, and that, cer- 
tainly, is one of the disabilities, especially in this 
particular phase, as recognition is the attractive 
point; and, therefore, the spirits may as well not 
come for that purpose, unless there can be light 
enough to be unmistakable. I am not finding any 
fault, for I am only too glad for their apparition 
any way. 

I am very hospitable to the spiritual manifesta- 



MATERIALIZATION. 241 

tions generalty, especially to materializations, hoping 
the latter will improve, as they have, to a great 
degree, already, and that I yet may be as fascinated 
with them as I am with many of the simpler, yet 
intelligent, phenomena; but all this wishing and 
hoping need not prevent the expression of my 
thoughts or views on the subject, even as it appears 
to me, and to sa}% though in one instance, I can say 
I recognized a spirit, and this fact of a positive 
recognition threw a luster on the phase generally, by 
making it possible that some others that I ought 
have, but could not recognize, may have been the 
persons they claimed to be. As the remembrance of 
that satisfactory one, with its accompanying luster, 
recedes into the distant past, I sometimes wonder 
myself if it was really so, and I seem to need repe- 
titions to keep me firm in the rut of that one special 
experience. 

As I read my recorded story of it now, which I 
know I wrote truthfully, and as I felt the reading of 
it, and the memory of it, among so many less impres- 
sively true ones since, have detracted some of the 
vividness of that one, and I find n^self asking in my 
own mind if that was realty so, paled a little, like a 
neglected photograph taken years ago, and }~et from 
my habits of making records I know it was so. 

Now for illustration of the subject generally. I can 
remember very distinctly my dark-eyed sister. I can 
remember her as plainly as if she now sat before me; 
and if she should appear at one of these seances as 
plainly as I now see her in my mind, how readily I 



242 SHADOWS. 

could recognize her. But this spirit has never 
appeared so ; she has come, so the form has said, but 
in such questionable shape I never could have known 
her ; and, if she is around me now, she knows I could 
not recognize a young woman of dark curly hair, and 
large, bright, black eyes, dressed flowingly in white, 
her head-dress flowing, and white, also, not a speck 
of dark hair in sight, and no speculation in her eye. 
These phantasms — no, not phantasms, they are too 
human and muscular for that — do not attract me as 
the actual presence of my spirit friends, or even as 
being the personal presence of spirits. This was my 
experience in ocular recognitions until my friend 
Albert appeared, and it was so like him, though 
almost speechless, with his manifest, quiet manner, 
the whole phase rose higher in my estimation, and I 
have the faith that it will go on improving, and these 
disabilities grow less and less. 

It seemed to me, before the time of which I am 
speaking, and so it has since that in observing others' 
recognitions, that they came to their conclusions 
quicker than I could. It is possible there is a differ- 
ence in people's eyes, some seeing better in the dark 
than others. I have sometimes wondered if people 
had not intuitive help, perhaps some clairvoyant 
power supplementing the ocular. I am only making 
these observations to show the state of my own mind, 
not for any special information or instruction, or I 
would write an essay on the subject, which this cer- 
tainly is not. 

The most interesting feature to me in these materi- 



MATERIALIZATION. 243 

alizations, and which T considei spiritual manifesta- 
tions, is not in the personalities of the apparitions, but 
in the fact that they are spirit manifestations. When 
I have satisfied myself that a woman, passing from 
us and going behind a curtain into the triangular 
space in the corner of a room, and the woman by 
measurement is under five feet in stature, and there 
is no way for a confederate to go into that enclosure 
without my seeing him or her enter, and then there 
comes out of that triangular space into the room a 
man six feet high, and I shake hands with him, and 
know he is alive and not on stilts, but standing or 
walking firmly and naturally on the floor, I know 
then there is no possible metamorphosis from the 
medium into that spirit. It is of no consequence 
whether the apparition is John Brown or General 
Burnside or my uncle, — that is not the point. 

There is a human-looking form that I know is not 
the medium, and is not a confederate, and being then 
an extemporized one it must be spiritual, because it 
is an intelligent act, and an intelligent apparition, 
and there is no intelligence that is not connected 
with either a mortal or a spirit. That, then, of itself 
is an interesting fact, and a wonderful one. If this 
fact or apparition claims to be some departed friend 
of mine, that I would know if I saw him or her, and 
yet do not know the apparition, that does not add to 
the interest of the manifestation ; it detracts, if any- 
thing. The spirit had better remain a " beauty and 
a mystery " than assume to be some special personal 
friend that is unrecognizable. 



244 SHADOWS. 

I cannot think of a departed friend, male or female, 
that I could not recognize in a light even below the 
reading point, if they came looking as they did when 
I knew them or last saw them. If they are in any 
disguise by unusual drapery or growth, so that we 
can only take their word for it, having necessarily 
our doubts, and deficient as they all are in loquacity 
or fluency or loudness of speech, they might as well 
remain incog. The interest centering in form mani- 
festations at present to me is much more in the fact 
than in the recognitions. I make a great distinction 
between intellectual and optical recognitions, and I 
shall say a word further on that distinction. 

Now I will relate a few experiences of the many I 
have had that have interested me. I will begin with 
this one. I went into a cabinet at the commencement 
of a seance with the medium, at her request. She 
was clothed as ordinarily in a dark slate-colored dress. 
She sat in a chair facing the opening, and quite near 
as it was a shallow one. I stood front of her, back 
to the opening, holding each of her hands in one of 
mine. There was a purpose in it as the reader will 
see. When she said " That will do," I then dropped 
her hands, and turned to go out. I did not move a 
step forward as the cabinet was shallow, as I have 
said ; but parting the curtain I was visible to persons 
in the circle who began to notice me, holding up their 
hands or saying : " See, see it ! " I thought to myself 
they were taking me for a spirit. On turning a little 
I saw what they had noticed ; it was a female spirit 
close behind me clothed in white, arms extended; 



MATERIALIZATION. 245 

the spirit was taller than I was, as I had to look up 
a little at her face, while the medium was shorter. 

The principal thing to notice here was the impos- 
sibility for a woman, dressed darkly, sitting in a 
chair whose contiguity I had not left, to appear 
instantly as a taller person, clothed in white. I am as 
sure there were, on this occasion, two personalities 

— the medium and the spirit, and no confederate 
assistance — as I am that I am now writing on paper. 
I may be different from many others, but how com- 
paratively insignificant is the more or less doubtful 
recognition of some departed friend by the side of 
this perfect evidence of an extemporized human 
form ? 

On one occasion, when attending a very satisfac- 
tory seance, where the cabinet was a curtained, shal- 
low alcove, with no entrance to it but from the room 
where we were sitting, and in sight of us, I am 
as positive there was but one person in the inclosure 

— that being the medium — as I am that earth is 
attended with but one moon. Many recognitions 
were made of the spirits appearing from time to time 
by some of the persons in the circle ; they were not 
very convincing to me as recognitions, but that was 
no concern of mine. The fact of their being appari- 
tions at all is what interested me, and of that I have 
no doubt. At last, a female spirit appeared at the 
parted curtain, and signified by a nod, after parties 
had severally said "Is it for me?" that it was for 
me, and I went up to the cabinet. I presumed it or 
her to be one of my friends that I could not recog- 



246 SHADOWS. 

nize. As usual, this form was voiceless. I felt that 
if I had said : " Is it Hannah or Emeline or Adeline ? " 
she would have nodded affirmatively, but I asked no 
such leading question. I said in a hospitable voice 
that I was glad to see her, whoever she was; hoped 
she was well and happy, and having a good time 
generally; to which she, in her mute way, assented. 
I shook hands with her, and got such a good, solid 
grip of an apparently muscular hand that, in my 
mind, I concluded to keep it, and did so, by no 
means to pull her out into exhibition, but simply 
"to hold the fort." 

In a second or two the spirit, as might have been 
expected, intimated a withdrawal of her hand, and 
I advanced closer, saying: "Do j^ou want me to 
enter?" She signified "Yes," and I went into the 
pitch-dark enclosure, her hand firmly in mine, I hav- 
ing, as I said, a good grip with my right hand. With 
mj r left hand I felt of the medium, who was sitting 
down, so I had perfect evidence it was not a dummy, 
but the medium, I still holding the hand of the 
spirit. When conscious of there being two pres- 
ences, I found nothing in my hand, only my closed 
hand which had never relaxed ; the spirit hand that 
I had held was not withdrawn ; it had dissolved into 
nothing, — dematerialized, as it is called, — and I had, 
as I have said, an empty hand. The medium, at 
that point, came out of the trance. I parted the 
curtain, and we two came out into the room. 

I am sure, so were all, that a few moments before 
there were three presences in that cabinet, — the 



MATERIALIZATION. 247 

spirit, the medium, and this scribe ; there were now 
only two, — the extemporized form, apparently as 
human and substantial as the remaining two, had 
dissolved again into the invisible air. This, then, is 
an evidence of the production of a form, visible and 
tangible to the senses; to me it is incomparably a 
more satisfactory evidence than what have been 
recognitions in my presence, because the fact itself 
is demonstrated. The impression that I am trying 
to give in this dissertation is that the value of the 
fact is of more consequence than any claimed person- 
ality, whether historical characters or from our sev- 
eral tribal or social circles. 

From what I have seen, and am sure of, in this 
department of Spiritualism, I have faith that it will 
continue to improve. I see already a difference in 
the conditions on different occasions in the make-up 
of the circle, affecting the quality of the manifesta- 
tions and the degree of light permitted. I have been 
in carefully-selected circles where the presentations 
or productions were great improvements, even by 
the same medium, over those in the presence of 
promiscuous gatherings. I am not without faith 
that this phase of the phenomena has come to stay, 
and to improve; and the apparitions improve ; and, 
exhibited under a brighter light, the recognitions 
will be more apparently genuine and unmistakaable; 
for, say what you will, these forms, as a general 
thing, are rather stupid-looking; they lack bright- 
ness and intelligence much more than they do mus- 
cular and physical vigor. 



248 SHADOWS. 

I have said but little about frauds. I am not 
unmindful of them, and their liability. The condi- 
tions of darkness, cabinets, side rooms, and credulity 
permit them. I am presuming, however, that the 
reader will understand that I have been open-eyed in 
all directions, and when I speak as positively as I 
do, and have done in these several "shadows," it 
will be understood that I have taken into considera- 
tion the many disabilities connected with, at least, 
this phase of the manifestations. It seems hardly 
worth while for me to write out the details of detec- 
tion ; the reader must presume I am not a fool, and 
if he cannot presume so, what 1 say any way will be 
of no account, and I am not writing for his benefit. 

There is no question that there are disadvantages 
enough in this phase of the materialization of forms 
to make it peculiarly liable to fraud, notwithstanding 
the sacredness of the subject, particularly in its com- 
mercial or business aspect. There are frauds, also, 
where the medium is not to blame ; it may be on the 
part of the spirits, and in the fine magnetic lines of 
attractive and repulsive influences ; the audience 
may be, and unquestionably is, a factor in the mani- 
festation, both in drawing around like-minded spirits, 
and also in furnishing u raw material," so to speak, 
to help in the materialization. 

It is no use, however, to excuse the medium for 
the overt act if caught personating a spirit, or with 
the paraphernalia of decoration ; she must take the 
consequences, whether audiences or spirits are to 
blame or not, though it is possible for such an act to 



MATERIALIZATION. ^4U 

be perpetrated, and the medium to be perfectly inno- 
cent. I never make this as an argument to anyone. 
I would expect to be laughed at if I did; bub those 
who know something of the dynamics of this subject 
know I am right. 

I can hardly understand the motive on the part of 
spirits for deception ; the fact, however, is unques- 
tionable. I have known the personation of a spirit 
by the medium, where the latter was innocent and 
wholly unconscious, and the form was allowed by 
the spirit controlling to be accepted as a materializa- 
tion. I think a fraud out of order always, whether 
by spirit or mortal. A transfiguration is as wonder- 
ful a manifestation as a materialization. Why the 
spirits permit a form of that kind to come forward 
and be received as an extemporized presence, or a 
materialization, is very strange, to say the least, and 
I think the less of them for it. I feel myself that, 
when I am a spirit, if I should be attracted to this 
business of extemporizing forms, which is very doubt- 
ful, they would be what they claimed to be, or there 
would be no apparitions. 

I think I have now said about enough, if I have 
been lucid, for anyone who cares to know where to 
place me, which is as a firm believer in the fact of 
materialization with the same difficulty of identifica- 
tion as in the other phases of the manifestations, and 
that the fact of identification in all phases of the 
manifestations is a subordinate one to the main issue, 
which is of answering Job's question affirmatively, — 
" If a man die, shall he live again ? " 



250 SHADOWS. 

If the "Sage of Galveston" were alive, he would 
.ay here is a good place to stop. Why should I say 
"if alive," wheu the chapter on his return proves 
him so ? Well, it is only a figure of speech. The 
" Sage " thought, however, may have been a whisper, 
and if this were a newspaper article here would have 
been my period in response. Writing now in a more 
permanent form, I will say to my invisible friend that 
I think I had better add an affirmative illustration 
or two just for a finish, and will do so. 

A daughter of mfrie, whom the reader will remem- 
ber as Hattie, has come to me in materialized form 
several times. Of course I could not recognize a lady 
of thirty who passed out of sight a child of six. This 
spirit once came, called me "Father," and gave her 
name as "Hattie," softly but audibly. She made a 
sign with her hands, indicating her hight when she 
died, or when I last saw her ; this certainly was pretty 
good evidence. A few days after I was accidentally 
at a sitting with a test medium, who did not know 
that I had been at a materialization, and Hattie came 
through or controlled her; said she showed herself 
to me at the dark circle the other evening. Both 
experiences made what I would call an intellectual 
recognition, and the fact was a very interesting one. 

Some year or two after that, and not very long ago, 
she came again ; this time Miss Berry was the medium. 
As I sat in the circle, the lady sitting next to me, 
whom I did not know, but who was a medium, said 
to me : " Have you a Hattie, a young lady in the spirit 
world?" I said "Yes." "She is your daughter, 



MATERIALIZATION. 251 

is she not?" "Yes," said I; then she said: "She 
has been standing by you, and leaning on you all the 
evening." 

In about half an hour after that, the lady not hav- 
ing moved or spoken to anyone, so this episode was 
private, the manager of the circle said : " Hattie 
Wetherbee is here, and says she will try to show her- 
self to her father." I went up to the cabinet, and 
very soon the spirit of a young lady appeared and 
embraced me, and retired. I say spirit because that 
is the custom; but these forms have more of a 
material than a spiritual aspect, all of them; hence I 
suppose the designation, materialization. In a little 
while she opened the curtain again, and, putting her 
head close to mine, whispered to me saying : " Father, 
I have been with you all the evening," pointing to 
my seat, and adding : " You knew it, too, for I got 
her to tell you." I think this, also, was a circum- 
stantial or intellectual recognition, and I consider it 
an interesting circumstance. I will acid, however, 
that the two "forms" of what claimed to be Hattie 
at those two different times were very far from being 
duplicates. They were not out of keeping, however, 
to what my daughter might have been at her maturity ; 
but one was six or eight inches taller, and every way 
larger than the other, so that dissimilarity is a draw- 
back to identification, unless spirit forms are elastic, 
which is not unsupposable ; but as spiritual manifes- 
tations, with the circumstances, it seems to me they 
were perfect. 

One more circumstance I think will be all that 



252 SHADOWS. 

" the invisible Sage " will allow me to add to this 
chapter. This was a very interesting occasion, and 
also was at the Berry sisters'. The circle was select 
and special, small and for a purpose. I will not give 
a full description of it ; I will copy from my record 
book the circumstance that specially interested me. 
Among the forms that appeared was the apparition 
of a relative. I did not recognize her, so I asked her 
name. The spirit replied: "I am Mary Smith.' 1 

Mary Smith was my mother's cousin, who had been 
dead forty years, and was a maiden lady of sixty 
when she passed away. I remember her as she looked 
then as well as I remember my mother. She 
appeared on this occasion as " a radiant maiden " well 
preserved of middle life, yet she was then a century 
old. That somewhat contradicted the poet's affirma- 
tion where he says : — 

" Little of all we value here, 
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year, 
Without both looking and feeling queer." 

Not so contradictory however upon a second read- 
ing. She looked, as we trust all old people do, in the 
spirit world, — a sort of youthful maturity. 

Of course, I could not see anything in this fine- 
looking, well-arrayed person to remind me of cousin 
Mary. In her life, she was an educated lady of 
refinement. Her sister was the wife of the venerable 
poet, Richard H. Dana, who died, aged ninety, a few 
years ago. I mention this to show that her social 
surroundings were of a high order, and it may have 



MATERIALIZATION. 253 

had something to do with her rather extra-radiance 
on this occasion, so that I was rather proud to renew 
her acquaintance and relationship in her well-pre- 
served condition. For fear the reader will think I 
am straining to hold on to this relationship, I will 
say that after announcing her name in a small, sweet, 
low-toned, but distinct voice, she said : "Adeline and 
Hattie are here with me, and so is Albert,*' and a 
little more that need not be repeated. No one pres- 
ent knew the relative connection of these names and 
circumstances, which seem to have been added for 
the sake of identification, and that gave me another 
tolerably good intellectual recognition. Well, I 
think I had better stop here, even if abruptly, and 
to take the edge off of such maybe Sage abruptness, 
I will add the following poetic thought, or semi- 
information : — 

" Ghosts of happy, fond illusions, 
Flitting over laud and sea, 
Through my heart your viewless footsteps 
Come and go eternally." 



XXIV. 

CUT BONO? 

What is the good of it all, even admitting it to be true ? 
— The answer self-evident. 

Cui bono, — what is the good of it ? some say ; and 
it is generally by worldly and unthinking people, 
and, perhaps, after listening to testimony that they 
cannot deny or explain. It is a question I rarely 
answer. It does not seem to me worthy of an 
answer. If' the answer to it is not at once self-evi- 
dent to the questioner to answer it, or .by argument 
to make it appear of value, seems to me like casting 
pearls before swine. The remark of James Russell 
Lowell seems to be applicable, where he says: "The 
only way to argue with an east wind is to put on 
your overcoat." 

When that thoughtful, scholarly writer, Ernest 
Renan says : " If we could each of us be sure, once a 
year, of exchanging two words only with the loved 
and lost, death would be no more death," he stated 
a truth, and I do not think anyone will doubt it. Is 
not, then, that silly or thoughtless question answered? 
When Henry Thomas Buckle, that profound student, 

254 



cm bono? 255 

and who was not one of the believers in a future 
life, or, more properly, was an agnostic in his views 
of the matter, said that, "If mankind was deprived 
of its belief in immortality, lean and unsatisfactory 
as it is, it would be insane from despair," did he not 
answer the cui bono? Is not, then, the sensuous 
proof of a life beyond the grave, of itself, a boon to 
mankind ? Both of these affirmations show that the 
human heart is hungry for this light. 

Is there not a reply to the question cui bono? in 
food for the hungry, and is it not as essential or 
important to feed the spirit of a man as to feed 
his body? One who spoke with authority said: 
"Man cannot live by bread alone." Anyone who 
says cui bono? at what Spiritualism proposes, or what 
it practically is, says in plain language that man can 
live by bread alone, and there are many that do live 
so, and, verily, they will have their reward. 

If the man says cui bono ? because he knows there is 
no future life beyond this, or that it appears so to 
him, and that we are knocking where there is no 
door, then it is a waste of time, and cui bono? is the 
proper question to ask ; but that has no bearing on the 
subject. Modern Spiritualism makes a positive state- 
ment. It says there are intelligent phenomena that 
claim to be the voice of the departed ; and when it 
cannot be denied or accounted for by the party, and 
he says cui bono ? the question is an absurd one, for 
if there is no such future, of course there is no good 
to come from it. The asking of the question, then, 
is begging it negatively. 



256 SHADOWS. 

Modern Spiritualism, in its basic fact, is either 
true or it is false. If true, as we have said, the bare 
fact answers the question of cui bono? If it is false, 
the question is superfluous. 

There is something in human life that is of essen- 
tial value besides "bread and butter," — that is, 
besides health, wealth, popularity, or position. Prof. 
Tyndall deals with values, and in a scientific man- 
ner. He says : " The circle of human nature, then, 
is not complete without the arc of feeling and emo- 
tion. The lilies of the field have a value for us beyond 
their botanical ones, — a certain lightening of the 
heart accompanies the declaration that 'Solomon in 
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' The 
sound of the village bell which comes mellowed from 
the valley to the traveler upon the hill has a value 
beyond its acoustical one. The starry heavens, as 
you know, had for Immanuel Kant a value beyond 
their astronomical one. Round about the intellect 
sweeps the horizon of the emotions from which all 
our noblest impulses are derived. I think it very 
desirable to keep this horizon open ; not to permit 
either priest or philosopher to draw down his shutters 
between you and it." 

Anyone who asks the question : "What is the good 
of it ? " in reference to the claim of modern Spiritual- 
ism, has his shutters so thoroughly drawn down that 
he does not know what light is ; he is an eyeless fish 
in the Mammoth Cave of materialism. 

The editor of the Scientific American, who does 
not believe at all in modern Spiritualism, but, on the 



cui boso? 257 

contrary opposes it, does not say cui bono? he pays 
this tribute to it, with an "if." "If it be true," he 
says, "such words as vast, profound, tremendous 
would have to be strengthened a thousand-fold to be 
fitted to express its importance. If true, it will 
become the one great event in the world's history. 
It will give an imperishable luster of glory to the 
nineteenth century." These are my sentiments also, 
without any "if." 

Here we all are in this world, faith gone into eclipse, 
revelation weakening in its foundations, the intui- 
tions of the soul following faith into its eclipse, 
because the records of holy writ do not rest on the 
bed rock, — doubt and agnosticism intruding into the 
human mind. Xow comes some intelligent phe- 
nomena into the world of human thought that, if 
true, throws a luster of truth on the ancient records, 
or at least proves a spiritual source for what is called 
revelation, and reproduces the fore-world of confi- 
dence again; and, if it does so, who asks the question, 
cui bono? — certainly no one but a thoughtless igno- 
ramus. 

Epes Sargent, speaking of matters bearing on this 
point, says: "This universe, you may be sure, is not 
an infinite contrivance for the production and swift 
extinction of sentient, loving, intelligent life. It is 
not a stupendous vestibule to a charnel house, where 
affection, friendship, science, and art find congenial 
and progressive recipients for a few fleeting moments, 
and man is admitted to a glimpse of a possible hap- 
piness and growth, and then plunged into the black- 



258 SHADOWS. 

ness of annihilation, — a world where life and mind 
are given only to be withdrawn, as if in mockery, 
and truth and goodness are as evanescent as falsehood 
and evil." 

Is not the "fact" an important one, if it settles 
affirmatively that death and the grave is not the end 
of a man's life ; that the man survives death, and has 
a continued or perpetual conscious life beyond it? 
Does anyone question the value or cui bono? of that 
fact because, in his estimation, it is not yet proved 
or provable? It does not alter the fact of the claim 
that it makes. Can anything be conceived that is of 
more value to the people of this world, and more 
conducive to their well-being and moral worth than 
to know beyond a peradventure that our fathers, 
mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, who are the lost 
stars in our several social circles, are still alive, con- 
scious of our in-comings and our out-goings, and, as 
of old, having a real though invisible supervision over 
us? If anyone does not see the matter in this light, 
then cui bono? is their proper query, to which I make 
no reply except to say, in the language of Scripture, 
that I have no pearls to cast away. 



XXV. 

PREVISION. 

Containing some thoughts on prophecy, critical and 
illustrative. 

The following article was written for and printed 
in a magazine ; the inspiring motive was the words : 
"Will he enlighten us ? " Some one, somewhere, had 
criticised me on my ideas on the subject of prophecy. 
The only memorandum I have now to refresh my 
memory reads thus : "Why should Brother Wether- 
bee not hope for the time to come when a more intel- 
ligent method obtains of forecasting future events? 
He sees wisdom in our ignorance of events to occur 
in the future ; we do not. Will he enlighten us ? " 
This memorandum does not bring into my mind the 
circumstances that called for this question, and led 
me to write the article referred to. Reading it over 
lately, I thought it, or at least some of it, was worth 
preservation ; so, it being short, I will copy it, as 
follows : — 

As the four words, "Will he enlighten us ? " linger 
in my mind as an inspiring impulse, the lines of 
Emerson arise in my memory. It is an orphic but 

259 



260 SHADOWS. 

characteristic expression of a rather weird flavor. 
There is no remarkable definiteness in the thought, 
and yet it seems to carry a suggestive undertone 
which hints at a connection between prevision and 
" the thing so signified.'' I hardly think any words 
of mine will bring the poet's idea into more bold 
relief, and the best thing I can do is to quote it, and 
then leave it : — 

" Delicate omens traced in air 

To the lone bard true witness bear; 

Birds with auguries on their wings 

Chanted undeceiving things 

Him to beckon, him to warn; 

Well might then the poet scorn 

To learn of scribe or courier 

Hints writ in vaster character ; 

And on his mind, at dawn of day, 

Soft shadows of the evening lay ; 

For the prevision is allied 
- Unto the thing so signified : 

Or say, the foresight that awaits 

Is the same genius that creates." 

The simple presentation of these lines will serve 
the purpose of concentrating my thought, and I hope 
they will the reader's also ; if not, read the quota- 
tion slowly and thoughtfully over again ; it will bear 
study. 

It is possible the time may come when the pedes- 
tal of prophecy will be a firm and reliable one, when 
prevision may become an exact science like astron- 
omy, a matter of mathematics to which I added in 
my communication, "I hope not ; I have no welcome 
for it." I still think there is wisdom in letting 



prevision. 261 

future suns shine on future days without anticipat- 
ing future sunshine or cloud by any system of dis- 
count. Still, I have a hospitable, or open eye, for 
truth and knowledge. I follow wherever truth leads. 
I presume I have the same feeling regarding the sub- 
ject of prevision, should it become a matter of scien- 
tific or mathematical exactness, like the calculation 
of an eclipse, or the transit of a planet across the 
sun's disk, that, perhaps, Jesus may have had when 
he said : " Father, let this cup pass from me ; never- 
theless, not my will but thine be done," feeling sure 
it will be done any way. 

Quoting this remark from the Bible leads me to 
think that Jesus may have been a mind-reader as 
well as intuitive and prophetic, and, perhaps, sensed 
the future feeling in this way; he may, perhaps, have 
sensed the collective and unspoken thought or senti- 
ment of the multitude, and may thus have known 
something of his painful and mortifying exit, or that 
it was to be inevitable, and so said to himself in his 
grief: "I hope not; I have no desire for it;" or, 
what amounts to the same thing, — the letter of the 
record, — "let this cup pass from me." 

A distinguished doctor and scientific man said in 
my hearing once that " If mankind knew each one 
the date when their own individual life was to end, 
— that is, his exit, as definite in the future as the 
coming of one's birthday, or of Christmas, — more 
than half of mankind w r ould go crazy." It was the 
matter of death that I had in my mind in what I said 
in the article to which I referred. Hence the knowl- 



262 SHADOWS. 

edge would not be wisdom, even if it should ever be 
truth. It seems to me the spirit world sees it in that 
light ; and though I do not think it has established 
itself very solidly on its prophetic power, but seeing 
a disposition on the part of mortals who believe in 
spirit messages to place some confidence in their pre- 
dictions, the spirits hesitate in expressing their opin- 
ion on the mortuary point. 

Renan, who wrote the "Life of Christ," who had 
some belief in the conscious existence of the departed, 
said : " If each of us could once a year be permitted 
to exchange but two words with the loved and the 
lost, death would be no more death " I find that the 
waves of new truth which are ever rolling in, and 
forever w T ill be, come into current knowledge about 
the time the race is ready for them. 

If what Renan, the French scholar says, is true, 
and what modern Spiritualism is beginning to make 
a fact, and is certainly softening down death's terrors 
from a grim messenger to an angelic one, the pre- 
vision of life's exit may not always be as unwelcome 
as it is now to the average of mankind. When it 
will not be the fact, as that doctor said, that half of 
mankind would go crazy if they knew as definitely 
to a day and hour their demise, as they know the day 
and hour of some coming birthday or anniversary, 
there may be such a change that people will rejoice 
at such a prevision, if the event was near, as they 
would to an appointment to some desirable foreign 
mission, or a promotion. 

This will, perhaps, explain my remarks on the 



PREVISION. 263 

possible future better or more scientific method than 
now obtains. I was and am speaking of the matter 
in the light of today, and, although I had human life 
mainly in my mind, the unwisdom of which I then 
spoke, applies to future events generally. 

I think, however, there is a psychic power or intel- 
ligence of an emotional or intuitive character mani- 
fested even in the flux of human and current affairs 
that seems to sense the future. Occasionally that 
knowledge leaks into mundane minds definitely. It 
comes sometimes in such a detailed manner that we 
know it is not accidental, or coincident, or in any 
sense a guess, that it is actually a prevision (instances 
in proof of this fact will be found in some of the 
chapters of this book, so need not be repeated here). 

Among many instances in proof of what 1 say, I 
will relate one. My mother's older sister, who died 
a spinster a few years ago at the age of 85, was a very 
singular woman, — very mediumistic, sensitive, and 
nervous. A history of her singularities would be 
quite illustrative of this subject, only her premoni- 
tions often lacked the dignity and sublimity that 
celestial influences ought to carry ; but, letting all 
that rest, she came down stairs one morning in a very 
pensive state of mind, — noticeably so ; but seemed 
disinclined to tell her grief. 

She was at this time a woman of about half a cen- 
tuiy old, and in tolerably good health, as her length 
of life afterwards indicated. Being alone with her 
during a part of the day, and manifesting some curi- 
osity, she explained her sadness. She said she had 



264 SHADOWS. 

had a singular dream. She was looking out of the 
front window; and, instead of seeing Hancock Street, 
as she ought to, she saw nothing but an extensive 
grave-yard, stones, monuments, here and there and 
everywhere. On some were dead people's names 
WTitten, and on some living people's names. Every 
name she saw was a relative or an ancestor, or some 
friend with whom she was acquainted. 

The greater number of these names seemed to 
be of those still living. On each stone, under the 
name, was the year 1806, or 1820, or 1860, or 1875, or 
whatever it might be (this dream occurred between 
1830 and 1840 ; I think about 1833). She saw quite 
distinctly twelve grave-stones in a row, with the 
names of her eleven brothers and sisters, and her 
own, on them, arranged in the order of their birth, 
and the year of their death on each. This was the 
conspicuous- feature of this cemetery, which, when 
observed, became a matter of interest, and the other 
part of the dreamy tableau began to grow dim, and 
recede, and soon formed no part of the picture, only 
the twelve stones with her brothers' and sisters' 
names remaining, and they seemed quite conspicuous 
and near. Soon that part vanished, and she awoke, 
but she was able to remember the years only of five 
of them, — two brothers and a sister, who had died, 
and two living sisters ; and the two sisters did die in 
the years that were on the stones named for them in 
the dream. 

The inference is that if she could have remembered 
the years of death mentioned on the other seven 



prevision. 265 

grave-stones, she would have had a prevision of the 
year of death of all the members of her family. For 
some wise purpose, the veil of forgetf ulness was drawn 
over them. Certainly, in that dream there was proved 
that somehow or somewhere there is the principle 
of prophecy. With this, and other instances in my 
own, as well as the world's, history, it shows what is 
possible, and yet I want none of it. I feel that I am 
happier without it. I do not want to discount the 
future joy or sorrow, — no objection to the joy, but 
as prevision includes both, I prefer the curtain to 
remain unlifted. 

I do not think spirits are prophets any more than 
men are prophets ; but as there is a great difference 
in the latter in reference to prevision, so there are 
differences in the former. The outlook of the former 
may be and is better than ours, and so may be, per- 
haps, approximately prophetic. 

I have the idea that all prevision is mathematical. 
The future is the product of the past. Given the 
factors, the unknown quantity can be made manifest, 
and thus the future is solved. I do not mean that 
the future is figured out literally ; but that the prin- 
ciple of prevision is mathematical. There have been 
geniuses who, on giving them an intricate sum, requir- 
ing in the solution necessarily a great complication 
of figures, yet the sum total or the answer is ready 
on the instant. The observer, a man of figures, goes 
through the operation, and with much calculation 
finds the genius's instantaneous answer correct every 



266 SHADOWS. 

time, proving a royal road to exist, but which cannot 
be converted into a thoroughfare. 

By some such road as this the future may be known 
to angelic minds, or minds in the supernal ; and, as I 
have said, sometimes this prophetic knowledge finds 
expression through human souls ; but as yet prophecy 
or prevision is not a thoroughfare even for spirits 
generally ; at least so it seems to me, and I think it 
best that it is so. 

There may be spirits of a high order with pro- 
phetic insight, and to whom coming events are ever 
present; and thus the world and its environment, 
with its inhabitants, spirits, and mortals, is run on an 
intelligent basis; and though most of the previsions 
that leak into this mundane sphere are through 
dreams, premonitions, nightmares, epileptic or shat- 
tered organisms, they at least show that there is pres- 
cient and prophetic power in the universe, both 
beyond mortal and ordinary spiritual reach. 

Does not the Concord philosopher, from whom we 
have quoted, give us an inkling of the idea in the 
lines herein quoted, and also where he says: " There 
is a crack in everything that God has made, and the 
light of heaven shines through the crevice"? I feel 
somewhat indebted to these "cracks" in human 
nature, and yet it is a blessed thing to be whole. 



XXVI. 

DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

Conclusions on several interesting and important 
points. 

I. There is no question of the fact with me that we 
have invisibly around us an environment composed 
of spirits, who have once been mortals on earth, and 
that they are still interested in us. I hardly need to 
say this only as a summing-up, for the reader, if 
he has got as far as this, will have inferred as much 
from the foregoing fragments of my experience. I 
know of no intelligence, and can conceive of none, 
that does not proceed from a human organization. 
I do not mean the materialistic idea, that the mind 
is the result of the human organization, for I have 
learned to look upon the human organization, in a 
logical sense, as the product of the human spirit ; 
but that, in a worldly point of view, the genesis of 
intelligence is human. The Great First Cause is not 
intelligent in the sense we usually define the idea, 
and that any oral or written intelligence is human 
and not divine in its origin. 

In a word, that Moses or some ancient wise man, 

267 



268 SHADOWS, 

or the departed spirit of some man, wrote the Deca- 
logue, and it was not by the finger of God, directly 
or indirectly, so that the work was not superhuman 
in any sense, unless one considers a spirit super- 
human, which I do not ; neither did the angel whom 
St. John was going to worship consider himself 
superhuman, for he said so, as recorded in the book 
of Revelations. The phenomena of modern Spirit- 
ualism suggests how this might have been done, and 
Moses have been honest ; and in the suggestion how 
in that age there might have been good reasons for 
crediting it to Divinity to add to its authority. I 
think it possible that the Decalogue was written by 
a spirit, and, if so, this invisible intelligence was 
human, for spirits are human beings once mortal, 
now called immortals. 

My conclusion is supplemented by the fact that 
the testimony of this invisible intelligence itself is 
that it is human. In every instance, from 1848 to 
date, no matter what the nature or character of the 
demonstration, comes the positive assurance that 
"I am thy brother man, and once a dweller like you 
upon the earth." This bottom fact, the basis of 
modern Spiritualism, as a statement, is as certain as 
the fact that there is such an ism current in the 
world. Identification of a spirit is difficult, and 
often a questionable matter, not so the fact that the 
invisible communicator is a spirit. 

II. The estimate put by the great and good 
spirits on accumulated wealth, which is such an item 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 269 

of desire here, is a low-grade one. The most disap- 
pointed man who passes over the river of death is 
the man of wealth, — starting from this side as a man 
of consequence, and becoming at once a nobody in 
the new relation. This is not alwaj r s so, and need 
not be the case, but such is the general fact. I do 
not expect, by saying this, to reduce the value or the 
desire, or the love of, or the acquisition of, wealth. I 
do not even expect to reform myself. I only know 
there is danger in it that the many do not escape. 
Escape, possibly, may be my compensation for the 
lack of it. 

I know, also, when not an idol, it is one of the 
most useful adjuncts to a man's condition; or, as 
Burns says : — 

" Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
Xor for a train attendant : 
But for the glorious privilege 
Of being iudependent ! " 

I am aware that but for wealth Washington would 
never have been the Father of his Country, nor Theo- 
dore Parker have been the iconoclast he was if pen- 
ury " had chilled the genial current of his soul," or 
Wendell Phillips have had the self-denial to dodge 
ambition for truth's sake but for his bank account; 
still the words of Pollock fit most human cases, only 
substitute the word wealth for gold in the passage 
quoted : — 

11 Gold, many hunted, sweat, and bled for gold ; 
Waked all the night and labored all the day. 
And what was this allurement, dost thou ask? 



270 SHADOWS. 

A dust dug from the bowels of the earth, 

Which, being cast into the fire, came out 

A shining thing that fools admired, and called 

A god ; and in devout and humble plight 

Before it kneeled, the greater to the less ; 

And at its altar sacrificed ease, peace, 

Truth, faith, integrity, good conscience, friends, 

Love, charity, benevolence, and all 

The sweet and tender sympathies of life.*' 

Wealth, I am aware, is a great means of civiliza- 
tion. The love of it, and the pursuit of it, has dis- 
tanced missionary work as a civilizer. A nation 
must have accumulated wealth before it can have 
culture, and, for efficiency, it must be concentrated 
in a minority, not diffused. We can say of it as the 
ancients said of offences: "It must needs be that 
wealth comes, but woe unto him by whom it 
comes." 

I do not mean that elevation of soul, heart, love, 
and sympathy abound with the poor, and all the sel- 
fishness with the rich. There is as much meanness, 
often more, in the idolatry of wealth as in its posses- 
sion. There are too many exceptions to the rule for 
the wealthy class to have the monopoly of selfishness, 
3^et selfishness is one of the prime factors in its pro- 
duction ; still, it may almost be said that the posses- 
sion as well as the love of wealth is the root of ail 
evil, — that is, it is dangerous to the spirit; and mod- 
ern Spiritualism, by its prevision of the next life, 
will yet teach mankind to a practical point that fact, 
so that men will not die mere money-bags ; they will 
grow under its teachings centrifugal and diffusive, 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 271 

gradually investing their surplus money, not for its 
semi-annual dividends, but for its value in the next 
world. Invested here, but becoming " Summer-Land 
Securities " there. 

III. I set a high value on phenomenal Spiritual- 
ism, or the spiritual manifestations. They may be 
trifles in themselves, but not trifles in their con- 
nection with unseen intelligences. They are the 
accented features of the subject. Practically, phe- 
nomenal Spiritualism is the whole of modern Spiritu- 
alism, or its only distinguishing feature. Modern Spir- 
itualism defined means sensuous proof that man 
survives death and communicates with his fellow-men 
who are still living in the form. 

Other isms claim a faith in a future life, more or 
less vague, as a sentiment, a hope, or a belief. Some 
have the idea intuitively ; but most people rest on 
Bible revelation, or the education growing out of it. 
I think that both the intuitional and the vague idea 
have been greatly strengthened even into rational 
thought in church teachings by the spreading of 
modern Spiritualism, and without recognizing the 
source of the rationalizing influence. This is more 
noticeable at funeral ceremonies than anywhere else. 

It is wholly the phenomena that make the senti- 
ment, or hope, or belief a matter of fact. Intuitive 
and hopeful people take comfort, or try to in an emer- 
gency, in the expressions of holy writ, such as these, 
for instance: "I am the resurrection and the life;" 
u Because I live, ye shall live also," and other similar 



272 SHADOWS. 

hopeful affirmations. Practical, or matter-of-fact men, 
which class includes most men of this age, say or feel 
otherwise, and point to "Rachel, mourning for her 
children, and refusing to be comforted because they 
are not," and say there is the fact; no glittering gen- 
eralities can dry those tears, and everybody outside 
of Spiritualism knows that it is true. 

There are some who consider phenomenal Spirit- 
ualism as light and trivial, and would consign it to a 
back seat, and make more prominent the ethical 
teachings of the subject. I am not one of such. I 
have been more deeply moved by a few ultra mortal 
raps than by any incarnated eloquence ever uttered. 
Not that I love education and progress less, — far from 
that, — but I like the phenomena more, because they, 
and they alone, to me have extended life and progress 
beyond the grave by their sensuous evidence. Shut 
the door on the phenomena, and the " gates " are not 
"ajar," — shut that door, and you shut out the light 
of modern Spiritualism. If you make the subject, as 
it would be then, wholly ethical, it would be but one 
ism more, and be hardly a modification or an improve- 
ment upon current liberal religious thought ; it would 
lack even the culture that has grown up in and 
around the earlier established orders of religious 
belief. 

I am not forgetting inspiration, nor the influences 
that have almost suggested a royal road to eloquent 
knowledge. Without the phenomena these high- 
toned moments could hardly be claimed as spiritual 
ministrations in the modern sense ; but the phenomena, 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 273 

admitted and recognized, then these inspirational 
efforts become a part of the general whole as one of 
the phases of the spiritual manifestations. Such 
inspirations and influences are as often seen in the 
walks of religious life as they are in the walks of 
Spiritualism. The Spiritualist knows from his expe- 
rience that a law exists for it, and the light shines 
through the thin places or cracks in the curtain 
between the two worlds whether the thin places or 
the cracks know it or not. 

IV. Spirits, I think, have a way of reaching us 
directly. I think the influences of our own spirit 
friends are more reliably from them when they come 
directly to us than when they come through a third 
party. I am getting to think that one's own impres- 
sions are as liable to be spiritual impressions as to be 
our own impressions. I have no doubt that spirits 
near us by love, relationship, or affinity reach our 
sensorium as readily as we do ourselves in our nor- 
mal genesis of thought. 

Science, as Dr. Storrs says, has not bridged the 
chasm between molecular action and human thought, 
and neither have we ourselves, nor even individually 
for ourselves, bridged it. We know, if our attention 
has been called to it, and have noticed the process 
that our emotions of affection and our intuitions 
seem to have a deeper root in our consciousness or 
our being than our intellect has. We examine our 
thoughts, the product of our mind, as a something a 
little outside of ourselves, as it were, semi-objectively, 



274 SHADOWS. 

— not so our emotions or intuitions. I have an idea 
that spirits en rapport with us have their avenue of 
communication in that deeper department of our 
being, and with us know and read our train or flow 
of thought that we call our intellectual life. 

We do not know the source of sudden thoughts 
or ideas that seem to bolt into our minds ; they may 
be self-induced, they m&y sprout into consciousness 
spontaneously, and they may be the influences or 
silent whisperings of the spirits. It is difficult to 
tell in the mental dynamics of our being what is our 
owil, and what is from the " diving that shapes our 
ends" or our own thoughts. This is a very apt 
expression for what is now known as " spiritual influ- 
ences," and leads us to think that Shakespeare was 
a medium, and very sensitive to the influences of the 
spirit world. Certainly Shakespeare, the man, and 
Shakespeare; the genius, were very different people, 
and impressed people differently, or we would today 
have known as much of him as we do of his contem- 
porary, Francis Bacon. 

V. A bright young spirit, very mature, however, 
in wisdom, gave a message, — it may have been alle- 
gorical, probably was. I will try and put it briefly 
into an intelligible form, thus : " I love my medium, 
and she wants some dollars for her uses, and I want 
some dollars, too, for myself." He got the dollars, 
no matter how; here is what he, the spirit, says: "I 
tried various ways for the possession of what I wanted ; 
I offered my dollars in exchange, but no spirit wanted 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 275 

tliem. They wanted love, truth, sympathy, wisdom, 
and for any of these they had returns to make of 
what I wanted ; but dollars nobody wanted, and, as 
you mortals would say, I have, in these dollars, an 
elephant on my hands, and I do not know what to 
do with it or them." This interview was quite inter- 
esting; I have tried to give the substance of it in 
these few words. It suggested some ideas on the 
subject of wealth from a spirit's standpoint. I will 
try to present my ideas, using that abridged message 
as an influence. 

Many people struggling under difficulties, and 
against odds, wonder why the spirits who loved them, 
and aided them when in the form, do not do so now 
when out of the form. It certainly would be an 
easier thing to do, it would seem, than it is to materi- 
alize a form, as they often do. Spirits certainly take 
an interest in us, and would naturally, one would 
think, be happy or unhappy, as we are happy or 
unhappy. They must be very much changed, funda- 
mentally, if they are not. 1 am very sure, did they 
not see some " glorious beaming star too far over yon 
mountain's hight " for mortal vision, they would be. 
It is very evident that the soft and wealthy con- 
ditions of this life do not come to the most deserv- 
ing; rather the reverse, it would seem to me. Strip 
from the wealthy their accumulations, they would 
hardly hold their own by the side of those more or 
less stripped by the chances and circumstances of 
life, as lovable, sympathetic people. When they are 
thus stripped, as all will be in the undress of the 



276 SHADOWS. 

spirit, when this " mortal coil is shuffled off," there 
will be a regrading of souls, and very different from 
the current one of earthly life. It will not be sur- 
prising then if many of the first will be last, and 
many of the last will be first, — many a millionaire 
be a street-sweeper, and many a man of mean estate 
here will be clothed in purple and fine linen there. 

I think in a world where wealth is goodness, spirit- 
uality, thought, wisdom, and the like, that the deni- 
zens of it in reaching their friends, who are still in 
the form, have lost their estimate of our wealth that 
is so appreciated here on earth, and of no value there. 
We who are adults have seen children play with 
marbles with all the earnestness of business life, as if 
marbles for the time being was their all in all, happy 
in possession, quarreling even for their accumula- 
tion; and we looking on can hardly realize the value 
of what they are aiming at and making such a fuss 
about, except by remembering we were all children 
once, and had marbles ourselves. It seems to me 
that spirits have about the same idea of wealth as 
we adults have of the marbles and foibles of our 
youth ; we have got past them. Thus the Goulds, 
Vanderbilts, Astors, Sages, Fields, etc., are simply 
children who have great accumulations of marbles 
through luck and skill, and we, or rather the spirits, 
can simply wonder what they will do with them 
when they are done playing. 

I am not forgetting the influence and bearing that 
wealth may have on one's soul or mental being. I 
am not forgetting the independence of thought that 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 277 

affluence sometimes gives its possessor. I know 
many men who have been brave in expression beyond 
their fellows, who would not have been thus leaders 
of thought but for their inherited or acquired wealth. 
True, there are exceptions ; let not the " money- 
bags " of life flatter themselves that these exceptions 
are the rule; for, as a whole, wealth narrows most 
men, or else the quality of narrowness, — caution, 
cold-bloodedness, selfishness, are combined more or 
less with the luck or parsimony which have been the 
factors of such accumulation. It is better to have 
hope without wealth than to have wealth without 
hope ; better still to have both. There is much truth 
in the orphic saying of Emerson: "A man takes 
from his soul what he puts into his money-chest." 



XXVII. 

THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 

Thoughts that the locality suggests to a Spiritualist. 

I think the Spiritualists who live in, especially if 
they are natives of, Boston have good reasons for 
being proud of their locality. I do not mean that it 
is of the "burning bush" order, — a place to put off 
one's shoes, because of its being holy ground, — for a 
good deal of its terra firma is artificial ; but I do not 
count that as in any sense unholy, for that has been 
a decided improvement upon the original first out- 
line of it as nature made it, or God, if one likes that 
expression better. 

Part of this artificial addition, a very small part, 
to be sure, has been selected by a liberal Spiritualist 
and dedicated to the spirit world, and a spiritual 
temple erected thereon, and yet, with that creditable 
event in my mind, I am not proud of Boston for any 
special holiness, and so what I am going to say I do 
so with my "shoes " on, uninfluenced by the Horebic 
injunction. I was saying, we Spiritualists who live 
in Boston have many reasons to be proud of it. It is 
a bright and respectable' old place for a new country, 

278 



THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 279 

or new to Caucassian life, as America is. In one of 
Plutarch's records of " Ancient Lives," a man says: 
"I thank the gods that I am a man and not a woman, 
a freeman and not a slave, a Greek and not a barba- 
rian." Never having been a woman, I cannot say as 
the Grecian did ; one, also, is not very sure how free 
he is or how enslaved, and so, also, would I be care- 
ful how I look down upon the barbarian, for such 
are as liable to be in our very midst as on, or beyond, 
the frontiers; still the Grecian's remark is an analo- 
gous one to my expression of pride in being a Bos- 
tonian. 

I am aware Boston would have been Boston with- 
out my aid, or the aid of three or four ancestral gen- 
erations who may have been an atom or two in it 
from its earlier days. I am aware, also, that all over 
this broad land are the sons and daughters of this 
"Hub," as it is sometimes called, who have as much 
inherent right to be proud of it as I have ; so, while 
I express my pride in being thus generically con- 
nected with the locality, I do not put on any airs, or 
prevent any distant ones from having their pride in 
this or any other place on the world's map. 

I have something to say about Boston, and I may 
get it said after awhile. By Boston I do not mean 
the little peninsular on the coast of the Bay State of 
two or three square miles of land, which the Indians 
called Shawmut, nor it with the accretions of terri- 
tory, of which I have spoken, by the "removal of 
mountains " in the neighborhood and casting them 
into the sea, thus doubling or trebling its area ; nor 



280 SHADOWS. I 

it with the supplements of contiguous cities and 
towns by annexation, so that now, geographically 
speaking, it has a territory over ten times what it 
had when it first became a figure in history. I 
include its vicinity, or the general indefinite local- 
ity which goes to make up the intellectual atmos- 
phere of this still small, but may I not say rather 
brilliant, spot in the world of letters and of thought. 

To having any claim of fanciful fitness to being 
the " Hub of the Universe," we have got to include 
Concord, with its past and living lights, and Har- 
vard College, and other objects, going by other 
names; and then we must remember the universe 
includes some undiscovered country outside of earth, 
— and, any way, it is an awful strain to call it the 
" Hub," and yet who does not know what is meant 
when the "Hub " is spoken of? But with all these 
qualifications and reductions, it seems to me to be 
more of a " Hub " than any spot of which I can 
think. So, though I do not consider it a "Hub," or 
call it one, I always consider the appellation compli- 
mentary, whether intended so or not. 

Historically, politically, religiously, learnedly, finan- 
cially, socially, this Boston, in its enlarged sense, has 
much to its credit, and, of course, some to its debit 
or discredit, but the balance is very large on its 
credit side, its enemies, if it has any, will admit 
that. Of course, many people, — people that are 
not only proud of this city, but people that this 
city is proud of, and who, by their learning and their 
reputation or influence have helped to make it the 



THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 281 

conspicuity it is, and who will agree to all I have 
said as yet, bat will not go with me now in saying 
that one of the things that helps make me proud 
of this locality s that enhances its value to me, is the 
reception it gives to modern Spiritualism. 

How many pleasant or intelligent faces will fall a 
shade or two on such an intimation as this; without 
any basis of truth such will of course think, and are 
happy in knowing, that it is not true, and, if it was, 
it would be retrogression and a stain rather than the 
source of pride to anyone. They might be charitable, 
perhaps, to the writer, and suppose him to be living 
in his little world and meeting Spiritualists only, and 
if meeting others not counting them, he has mistaken 
the extent, — strabismus is in his eye, and he thinks 
the world squints, as our aunt Nancy, at the North 
End, once said, whose husband was a Millerite, and 
I was laughing at her for such ^notions, when she 
replied : "Only think of it, how many do believe it. 
I hardly see a person who does not believe it, and is 
not preparing for it." Well, I suppose we all do see 
things pretty much as we wish to, or as our interest 
dictates. 

Still, it pleases me to feel that I am right, and 
proud of even being proud of the fact as something 
of a feature of the locality at the present time. 
Modern Spiritualism started, as we all know, in a 
small way, in the western part of the State of New 
York, less than two score years ago, and has spread 
now all over the world ; at least, in every part of the 
civilized and the uncivilized world, also, are found its 



282 SHADOWS. 

adherents, and the practical working of the law that 
is fundamental in its teachings, and its believers, now 
running into the millions, and has already become 
one of the large sects of the world (using "sects" 
as a general term of division in religious thought), 
haying a literature also of no mean pretension, and 
publications, magazines, and newspapers in a dozen 
different languages. 

In thus spreading itself more or less all over the 
world, it seems to me to have found a congenial 
atmosphere in this vicinity. I am aware there is no 
place anywhere that can be called its special center. 
But where is there more of it concentrated than is 
the case here? which seems to make it almost a duty 
to notice the fact before finishing this book, and 
which I am now doing. Look at the meetings for 
spiritualistic teachings that this locality sustains. 
See the number of mediums that dispense the idea in 
sittings or seances, in tests, messages, healing, and 
other ways, and by other names sometimes ; and with 
regard to the more sensuous phenomena there seems 
to be in this city about all the time a dozen mediums 
for materialization, to say nothing about other phys- 
ical phenomena. The manifestations for teachings 
and for tests also, in a private way, are enjoyed in 
all parts of the city, even in the higher walks of 
social life that the world knows but little about. 
This, to some extent, is so everywhere both in this 
country and England and on the continent, but it 
is remarkably so in this vicinity of which I am now 
speaking. 



THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 283 

Speakers and believers all over the country look 
fondly to this city for the rising thought, as if it 
were the home of this "Dawning Light," and the 
prestige of this locality often endorses the utterances 
of unknown persons. Thoughts acceptable here are 
apt from that fact to be acceptable elsewhere, and 
thus the push or the Boston momentum is felt at a 
great distance, and almost everywhere. 

The fact that the first spiritual temple, of which 
we have before spoken, is blossoming out here in its 
fine architectural proportions, is but one of the point- 
ers that show in thus owning up of my pride in this 
locality that I am not drawing on my imagination 
for my facts. 

I once heard the Rev. Nehemiah Adams, as he had 
just returned from the death-bed scene of a very 
pious member of his church, relate the circumstance 
at a large meeting then being held in Tremont Tem- 
ple. It is too long a story to relate here ; but it was 
about the seeing of a spirit that he, the dying man, 
knew when a mortal ; and the circumstances were 
such, and the prophecy that had been suggested by 
the manifestation was of such a character, that it 
proved there was no decay of mentality as the life of 
that man was closing in. But to Mr. Adams, his 
pastor, instead of this being a natural fact, it was 
looked upon and spoken of as a divine one, — an angel 
had manifested to this brother on account of his great 
and manifested piety. 

The reverend gentleman remarked after narrating 
the circumstances: "The curtain between the two 



284 SHADOWS. 

worlds was thinner than it once was." I have no 
doubt of that fact myself; but where was his authority, 
outside of modern Spiritualism, for saying so? The 
thought suggested to me by the remark was whether 
there were not, and always had been "thin places" 
on this earth, — places more open to spiritual influ- 
ences than other parts of the earth's surface. 

As in the human organization there are ganglionic 
centers or spots, or sensitive places, which are not 
universal in the human system, so there may be, so 
to speak, ganglionic spots or centers on the earth's 
surface. Of course it is likely to be as much or more 
in the race living on the spot as in the location; but 
may be that is not so certain. It would seem as if 
Palestine, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and, later, Brit- 
ain and many other places, suggest such an idea which 
has had so much to do with human history. 

Palestine, for instance, only about as large, and as 
unattractive as Wales, has left its mark deeply on 
the human race, giving the civilized world its religion, 
and Phoenicia, almost a part of it, the alphabet. 
Why did it happen so on that circumscribed and 
unattractive spot, when there were so many superior 
ones in every respect ? It is said that Frederick II. 
was sent to Syria against his will; the church perse- 
cuted him, and one of the charges was his saying 
that, " If God had ever seen Naples, he never would 
have selected Palestine for his chosen people." I 
quote this circumstance to show it is not the attrac- 
tive features of a locality that make it one of these 
ganglionic or "thin places." Neither dare I say that 



THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 285 

Boston is any more ganglionic, or thin, or sensitive, 
or magnetic than many other spots in the American 
domain; only I have uttered a thought indigenous, 
one may say, to a " Hubite," and I must try to make 
it reasonable. I do not seem to have any inclination 
to write on an ethnological subject, and I do not 
know as I am capable of doing so in an interesting 
manner if I had ; only in this closing chapter, as this 
city in its elastic or enlarged sense seems to be open- 
ing itself to our thought, the fact pleases me, and I 
felt like saying so, wondering also why it has rela- 
tively grown into such a marked locality for modern 
Spiritualism. 

The careful reader of the preceding chapters of this 
book will have very easily got the author's rationale 
of the fact just stated, that it is such a marked local- 
ity, and that naturally is his belief in the basic truth 
that modern Spiritualism teaches, viz., that there is 
an intelligent spiritual environment, which means 
practically both a general and a special supervision 
of the affairs of mundane life by the spirit world. 
That such supervising spirits saw a tendency, or, 
using spiritualistic parlance, finding conditions right, 
have influenced one to the point which by these 
remarks seems to have been reached in the present 
modern spiritual aspect in this vicinity. 

I hope there will be no solstice or retrogression in 
the movement, and the, so to speak, Horebic charac- 
ter of this locality be permanent, now having been 
ornamented or marked by the erection of the first 
spiritual temple of attractive magnitude, and dedi- 



286 SHADOWS. 

cated to the spirits, as it should be, it having been 
inspired from that source ; so, having said I was 
proud of being a Bostonian, and giving at length my 
reasons for being so, I hope the feeling will be per- 
manent and enduring, and the time come, as its 
teachings become more and more understood, when 
all the people will be like-minded, proud of this local- 
ity for its sake, and rejoice in the spread of this light 
which has begun to shine in the world, and brightens 
as it continues. The city of Boston has quite a his- 
tory for a spot not yet three centuries old ; has been 
the mother also of many other placed, and, as we 
have said, is quite a conspicuity, — far larger, in an 
ideal or transcendental sense, than are thousands of 
places of greater geographical extent. It seems, 
then, to be a fitting place for Spiritualism to have 
got a decided impetus, as it manifestly has, and if 
celebrated already for many things, it will be even 
more so for this dawning light when its truth has got 
implanted in the general mind, as will certainly be 
the case if it be a truth. I am writing as if it was, 
because I have solid reasons for knowing it to be so. 

Seems to me if any modern "Jacob ? ' should have 
a dream, here would be his pillar or bethel, where he 
would see the ladder reaching Heaven with the angels 
ascending and descending thereon, except that the 
Bible, and modern Spiritualism especially, teaches 
that not in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, nor even 
in Boston, is there any deific or angelic exclusiveness ; 
but the first round of that ladder rests wherever 
there is a truth-loving human being. 



THE BOSTON OUTLOOK. 287 

Coleridge, translating the poetry of Schiller, makes 
it read thus, — it is not a literal truth, but seems to 
be a suggestive one, so I use it as a terminus to this 
chapter : — 

" The spirits' ladder, 
That from this gross and risible world of dust, 
Even to the starry world with thousand rounds, 
Builds itself up, on which the unseen powers 
Move up and down on heavenly ministries,— 
These see the glance, the unsealed eye, 
Of Jupiter's glad children born in luster." 



288 SHADOWS. 

THEODORE PARKER. 



The earth is marked in many places 
With rocky scratches and furrows deep ; 

Boulders huge have left their traces, 
As diamond-pointed icebergs slowly creep. 

Records, or scriptures, writ on stone, 

Humanity is fast translating, — 
Reads wisdom from the Great Unknown, 

And grows religious speculating. 

So the moral world has " boulder scratches," 
Made by heroic souls in passing through it ; 

Prophets and poets, — " bearers of despatches," 
Lights in a world that hardly knew it. 

History, rich in storied names now dead, 
None brighter shine than that great teacher ; 

Today is brighter for the light he shed, — 
The world still needs just such a preacher. 

The "boulder scratch " of Theodore Parker, — 
Oh, who would now that mark efface? — 

Put out his light, and make it darker, 
Whose transit was a blessing to the race? 

His life, in years, how short it seems? 

How long in manly work for human good ! 
Religion in him was life, — not dreams ; 

Mute are his foes ; his mission understood. 

The voice of bigotry now is hushed 

That called him heretic, though sent of God ; 

Full many a sham by him lies crushed, 
And others safely walk where he in peril trod. 




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